WD Elements - External hard drive problem on my computer...can anyone help with this?

WD External and Portable SSD Portable SSD
1

Okay, so I plugged in my WD Elements 1 TB harddrive into my HP Pavilion G6 laptop (Windows 8) and for some reason, the harddrive did not show up in My Computer. Instead, I see that the WD Elements 1042 device is in Devices and Printers when I clicked the Safely Eject taskbar icon. This has never happened before, so I go into Device Manager and see if everything is connected properly. There seemed to be no problem with the harddrive itself so I thought a simple restart would solve everything. I restarted the computer, but the same problem is there. Anyone know how I can access my harddrive again without having to delete all my files on there?

2

Does the drive show in Disk Management and what does it say?

Joe

3

The drive does show in Disk Management as Disk 2 and it has a red arrow in a circle pointing down. It says Unknown and Not Initialized. Right clicking it gives me 4 options, initialize disk, offline, properties and help.

4

It sounds like a corruption problem. First try putting it online and make sure it has a drive letter. TestDisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk might fix it. You can look for data recovery software EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/free-edition-download.htm might work also.

Joe

5

There isn’t any drive letter, it only sees it as Elements 1042. TestDisk did not work, it didn’t see the hard drive at all. And EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard didn’t help either. It didn’t see the hard drive either.

6

Have you tried a different USB cable and port on the PC? Also don’t use a hub or a cable longer than supplied. Have you tried going into the Device Manager deleting the driver, disconnect the drive reboot system and reconnect the drive? That should load a fresh driver.

Joe

7

By “disconnecting the drive reboot system”, what exactly should I do? I just uninstalled both drivers (WD Elements 1042 USB Device and USB Mass Storage Device) and unplugged my hard drive. Then I plugged it back in and it reinstalled the drivers. After it was done, the hard drive still was not recognized and did not show up on My Computer.