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WD Elements external hdd is recognized but doesn't show up in My Computer

Tags:
  • Western Digital
  • Computers
  • Storage
  • External Hard Drive
Last response: in Storage
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July 13, 2014 7:03:40 AM

Hey guys I'm running Windows 7 64-bits in my new desktop and the problem is that although I connect my external wd elements windows recognizes it, installs the drivers but it does not appear on My Computer. It does show on device manager and I tried updating the drives and unninstalling the drive and installing again and nothing, I tried both my front usb 3.0 connectors and my mb connectors. Untill 4th July which was a week ago I was using that exact same external drive as a boot device with Linux on an old laptop and now I wanted to format it and use it as a backup drive.
Does anybody have a solution for this? the drive is 9 months old

More about : elements external hdd recognized show computer

July 13, 2014 7:20:20 AM

maybe that drive is hidden. Using a drive as a boot drive sometimes automatically hides the drive so that users basically cant mess around with the bootloaders etc. Try this: search partition manager in your start menu and open the program. Then look for the drive there. It'll look something like this


you might've assigned the drive a drive letter or label, if you did try to search for that name. If you didnt then windows might've done that for you. Since it's an external drive, it'll probably appear in its own separate section in the sense that there will be a horizontal line dividing your internal drive from your external one. When you do find the drive click on it and 'unhide' it
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July 13, 2014 7:45:12 AM

I did fing it there although it had no letter associated with it. and how do I 'unhide' it? thanks a lot
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July 13, 2014 7:52:38 AM

RyuuKu said:
I did fing it there although it had no letter associated with it. and how do I 'unhide' it? thanks a lot


well i use a software called 'EaseUS Partition manager', makes life so much easier and is alot better than win 7s own disk manager. But here is how i think you do this in windows 7: right click on the drive and then click 'change drive letters and paths' and then click 'Add'. Assign the drive whatever letter and/ or name you want then.

EDIT: btw you mentioned you wanted to use it as a backup drive, after you've assigned it a label you can then format it. 'EaseUS' also has a 'backup and recovery tool' software, i use it myself so just thought i'd tell you that
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July 13, 2014 8:03:37 AM

Leonell12 said:
RyuuKu said:
I did fing it there although it had no letter associated with it. and how do I 'unhide' it? thanks a lot


well i use a software called 'EaseUS Partition manager', makes life so much easier and is alot better than win 7s own disk manager. But here is how i think you do this in windows 7: right click on the drive and then click 'change drive letters and paths' and then click 'Add'. Assign the drive whatever letter and/ or name you want then.

EDIT: btw you mentioned you wanted to use it as a backup drive, after you've assigned it a label you can then format it. 'EaseUS' also has a 'backup and recovery tool' software, i use it myself so just thought i'd tell you that


For some reason I couldn click the 'change drive letters and paths' option so I installed EaseUS, how do I do it here? Thanks a lot for the help
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July 13, 2014 8:07:43 AM

you couldnt click the option? but it was there? try re-launching it 'as an administrator' ...also so you've installed easeus partition manager. find the drive again and click on it, on the left hand side it'll clearly state hide/ unhide...click that option and you're good to go. To give the drive a label or drive letter click 'change label' on the left hand side
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July 13, 2014 8:25:45 AM

After I rebooted the computer I could use the Windows option again so I did it from there and uninstalled the EaseUS and assigned a letter and formatted it and now it is recognized :)  again, thanks a lot :D 
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