I recently bought a 3TB My Book external. Works great. Plugged it in and it assigned itself to be drive “G”. So I went out and bought a second 3TB drive to replace an older external drive. However, this second drive won’t automatically assign itself a drive letter. It shows up the WD Quick View, but without a drive letter. If I unplug the first 3TB drive, the second does show up as drive “G”. Its like both of them want to be drive “G”. I tried reassigning the drive letter to “I”, and either 3TB drive will make the change. But when I plug in both drives at the same time, again, one is drive “I”, and the other is without drive letter. I have swapped out the plugin to different USB ports, thinking maybe it is a port issue. Again, both drives will not both work while plugged in at the same time. Each one will access and work when the other is not plugged in. I do have a total of 4 WD drives in the same computer. The 1TB and 2TB drives are not affected. Any help? Thanks.
Both drives were shipped with the same ID… Windows thinks it’s the same disc attached.
If the second one is empty, simply formatting again should get it a different ID and both drives will be usable with any computer.
Or, going into Disk Management and setting the second one as “Online” should solve the issue on that particular computer… which is handy if the drive already has data and you don’t want to format it, but would need to be done for each computer you attach both discs to.
I had several 1TB My Books that shipped with identical identifiers. Easy fix.
Thanks, RoofingGuy. Same id sounds correct. I reformatted the new drive, but unfortunately that didn’t work on my system. I’m trying the Disk Management suggestion now. But I can’t find Disk Management for some reason. I don’t see it in Control Panel or Device Manager.
Ok, I see Disk Management is accessed through “Computer”. Let me see what I can do.
Disk Management “sees” the unassigned drive and says, “The disk is offline because it has a signature collision with another disk that is online.” Seems to verify RoofingGuy’s analysis. Now let me see if I can turn it “online.”
Wow. That was simple. Just turn it “online”, it assigns a drive letter (“J” in this case) and apparently all is well. I really hated the thought of plugging and unplugging for the rest of time. Thanks RoofingGuy – you da man.
You’re welcome. I’ve only used the “set online” method myself. The other bits about formatting and whether it “works” on other computers or not is just what I’ve seen others suggest.
