Help!

[Shayk1951]

My husband bought me a 320 gig WD My Book Essentials external HD for my birthday (10/25)  in 2008. In 2009, it stopped working completely. I thought the USB cord had gone out, so I bought another one through Amazon. I tried to get it to work and when it still wouldn’t, I simply unplugged it. In 2010, my husband bought me a new PC (Windows 7 OS) and I tried to install it on that PC. Nothing. Just before Christmas, I bought a new laptop (Windows 8 OS) and tonight tried to install new drivers from the WD website. Even though my laptop shows the drivers installed correctly and even though my laptop says the My Book is functioning correctly, I still cannot access it.

I am a novelist. I have backups to all my novels on the external. I would like to get access. I tried to write to WD through the website and even though I KNOW the HD is out of warrenty, the support email won’t go through until I register the external. It was registered in 2008 when it was new.

Does anyone know of anything else I can do to get access to the drive?

[HDKnows]

Hello,

If the drive was purchased on 2008 it is probably not compatible with Windows 8. Reply to this post with the model number of the drive so we can verify that information.

You can also try some basic troubleshooting.

1- Connecting the power adapter to the wall directly.

2- If the computer is a desktop, connect it on the back USB port (directly to the PC, not through a hub).

3- Make sure you hear the connection sound windows makes when recognizes a USB device.

4- Go to "Disk Management” to verify if the drive shows up there.

If the drive shows up in disk management but it is not seen on Computer, then it means the partition is corrupted and you will have to format it in order to use it again. Please note that formatting the drive will delete all data stored on it.

If the drive is seen on disk management and you need to recover the data you can try using a data recovery software.