Sign in with
Sign up | Sign in
Your question

detects external hard drive, but cannot read any data

Tags:
  • External Hard Drive
  • Storage
  • Enclosure
  • Hard Drives
  • Netbooks
Last response: in Storage
Share
July 17, 2013 1:28:15 PM

Upgraded my netbook's mechanical hard drive to an ssd, then installed the mechanical drive into a generic external enclosure. both my laptop and desktop see the external drive under the 'Devices and Printers' tab in Win 7, and the properties tab states that everything is working properly, and it even detected the type of hd drive the enclosure has, but it cannot read it like a normal external usb hd.

Any suggestions? The device is called 'AS2105'

More about : detects external hard drive read data

July 17, 2013 7:18:05 PM

I used a data transfer kit that came with the SSD, at this point I just want to wipe all the data from the old hard disk, so retrieving data really doesnt matter to me.

When i go into disk management, it reads the external drive, but i cant change the drive letter name, cant initialize, cant do anything. Please note this disk was working perfectly well before I did transfer. I know its not the enclosure because i used the original data kit cable, and am getting the same results.

now i'm really stumped what to do!
m
0
l
July 17, 2013 9:04:10 PM

sorry, should have given some more info, this hard drive is a wd sata 3 gbps, already has the old win7 os on it
m
0
l
April 27, 2014 3:53:26 PM

I had this same issue and the root cause was Windows failing to assign a drive letter to the system partition of the externally connected drive.

Open up Disk Management (diskmgmt.msc from start menu, or cmd line)

Right click on the Primary partition of the external drive, choose 'Assign Drive letter'. Choose any to your liking and you should be good to go.


m
0
l
!