external 2tb HD see drive letter but cannot access, see simple healthy partition in comp management but cannot assign letter

pcdconsulting

Honorable
Jul 17, 2013
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10,510
Hi I have a WD 2TB Passport - 2 years old. Two days ago it was working fine. Yesterday plugged into windows 7 laptop and My Computer showed a green progress line, but did not show my drive. Eventually it showed a disk letter, but no detail with it, just the letter!
When I go to disk management it hangs, then (sometimes) eventually shows a healthy simple partition, but I cannot assign a drive letter to it.
Tried in a second laptop with he same problem.
Any ideas please, as to how I can assign a letter to the drive so I can access it.
Diskpart on the first laptop does not work properly. I have not yet tried on the second laptop.
 
Solution
Sounds like your 2TB died, I had that happened before with the 1TB same thing. You could try some of the Free Data Recovery Software outthere to see if they see anything, but I really doubt it, sounds like the HDD took a serious dump.

The ONLY other way to test out if it is the cable (case to your USB port), the USB/Sata card in the case OR the drive itself went belly up would be to crack it open (probably voiding the warranty) and plugging the drive with a seperate USB/SATA connector to your laptop. Then you can verify if the drive is fault or not (probably is) and you lost all the data on it.
Sounds like your 2TB died, I had that happened before with the 1TB same thing. You could try some of the Free Data Recovery Software outthere to see if they see anything, but I really doubt it, sounds like the HDD took a serious dump.

The ONLY other way to test out if it is the cable (case to your USB port), the USB/Sata card in the case OR the drive itself went belly up would be to crack it open (probably voiding the warranty) and plugging the drive with a seperate USB/SATA connector to your laptop. Then you can verify if the drive is fault or not (probably is) and you lost all the data on it.
 
Solution

pcdconsulting

Honorable
Jul 17, 2013
3
0
10,510


 

pcdconsulting

Honorable
Jul 17, 2013
3
0
10,510
I did not want to hear that :) :-(. But ok....
I will first try to force a drive letter with 'disk part'.
If that does not work, I will take it out of it's case and put it in my laptop (taking out one of the resident internal hdds) and see if controller card or cable was faulty. Cable was a bit flaky when plugged, needed a bit of jigging about.
Watch this space.