My Book Studio not detected Alienware computer Windows 7

WD External and Portable SSD External SSD for Windows
1

Hello,

I am posting here as a last resort. I purchased a WD My Book Studio 3 TB external hard drive from Dell along with a brand new Alienware X51 desk top computer running windows 7.

The first WD drive I received  would not power up at all. Dell exchanged it and I received the new drive today.

Upon installation the drive is detected by my machine and drivers successfully installed. However the drive is not visible in my computer or disc management. I am unable to transfer any data to the external drive.

The drive is visible in device manager.

Is there anything I can do with the drive not visible in disc management? Is something in alienrespawn blocking it? Is it mapped to a bad path? Is it a windows 7 issue? I spent the day researchingt this issue and could not find an answer.

I just want it to work.  Any advice?

I am not going to exchange it again, I will just return and get a different product.

The drive has the same problem when connected to another alienware computer.

My Passport external hard drive works fine on this computer.

Please help.

Thank you.

2

Does anyone have suggestions or should I just return the 2 drives I purchased that do not work on my system? Thanks.

3

Hello,

As a recommendation, Make sure that the drive is connected to a wall power outlet so the drive can get enough power. Also this units comes ready to be use on a Mac computer and in order for you to use it on a Windows computer you will need to reformat the drive.

Please see the link below for additional information on how to reformat the drive.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3865/session/L3RpbWUvMTQwMTkwMzE3Ni9zaWQva0Y4anAtVmw%3D/kw/how%20to%20format%20the%20drive%20for%20a%20windows/session/L3RpbWUvMTQwMTkwMzE3Ni9zaWQva0Y4anAtVmw=

1 Like
4

Thank you very much! The issue was the drive needed to be formatted for Windows. I had specifically asked Dell if this drive was plug and play for Windows systems and they told me it was. I guess they were wrong.

The link you provided was the exact solution I needed. 

Thanks again!

5

Plug and play means you don’t need to restart when you connect the drive for it to work. Has nothing to do with the fact that you didn’t check Disk Management in Windows to realize your drive was not even partitioned or formatted!