WD Elements 2TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive Cannot find drive on window 10 home
, OMG i dont know what to do with this external hardisk i brought not even one years stop working on my Microsoft® Surface Pro 7
How ever i have try to plug in my old laptop also cannot see hardisk but when i m run control panal -i can see driver show Elements but i cannot doanything much …
what to do ?
Is it not showing up in This PC?
Open Disk Management and connect your WD Elements drive to your computer. Does it show up as being partitioned and formatted? Does it has a drive letter assigned to it?
not show also
I suggest troubleshooting by following these steps in order:
1. Assign a drive letter in “Disk Management”
Often, the system has already detected the hard drive but simply hasn’t assigned it a drive letter (such as D: or E:).
Right-click the Windows Start icon in the bottom-right corner and select ‘Disk Management’.
Locate the drive: Look for a disk with a capacity of approximately 1.8TB in the list below (usually marked as “Unallocated” or lacking a drive letter).
Solution:
If it appears as “Healthy” but lacks a letter: Right-click the partition → select Change Drive Letter and Paths → click Add → assign an unused letter.
If it shows as “Unallocated” and is a brand-new drive: Right-click it → select ‘’New Simple Volume( Note: If it is an old drive containing important data, do not format it blindly).
2. Uninstall and re-detect the driver in “Device Manager” (driver freezes or conflicts can cause the issue where the device is visible but unusable).
Procedure: Right-click the Windows Start icon and select ‘Device Manager’.
Locate the device: Expand ‘Disk drives’ and find your WD Elements drive.
Solution: Right-click it → select **Uninstall device**. Once uninstalled, unplug the external hard drive, restart your computer, and then plug the drive back in. Windows will automatically reload a fresh driver.
3. Check if the hard drive is in RAW format
If the drive is visible in “Disk Management” but the file system is listed as ‘RAW’, you should first use data recovery software to scan for and export important files to your computer’s internal drive, then format the external hard drive to ‘NTFS’ to use it again. (This blog is also helpful - How to Fix USB Flash Drives not Showing up in Windows)
