External hard drive not showing up. Is it safe to uninstal through device maneger?

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athyrarose

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Sep 20, 2014
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My western digital extaernal recently stopped showing up under anywhere but device maneger. Is is safe to uninstal then reinstal it to see if that helps? will i lose my files if I do?
 
Solution
Darkbreeze
Unplug the USB cable for your external drive. Go to device manager and open the category with your drive, generally, disk drives. If the device is still listed, right click on it and select uninstall. Reboot and once windows is loaded plug the device back in and check to see if it is now recognized.

If no device was listed in device manager when you unplugged the USB cable, go up to "View" at the top of device manager and select "show hidden devices". Go to disk drives and see if the drive shows up as a grayed out device. If so, perform the right click uninstall as above. If not, just reboot and then plug it back in once back in windows. If none of this works, run Seatools for windows on the drive to see if there is a problem with the...
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Jun 24, 2014
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Unplug the USB cable for your external drive. Go to device manager and open the category with your drive, generally, disk drives. If the device is still listed, right click on it and select uninstall. Reboot and once windows is loaded plug the device back in and check to see if it is now recognized.

If no device was listed in device manager when you unplugged the USB cable, go up to "View" at the top of device manager and select "show hidden devices". Go to disk drives and see if the drive shows up as a grayed out device. If so, perform the right click uninstall as above. If not, just reboot and then plug it back in once back in windows. If none of this works, run Seatools for windows on the drive to see if there is a problem with the device. Run the short DST (Drive self test) and if it passes, run the long generic.

Seatools for windows:

http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/item/seatools-win-master/
 
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Solution
D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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Hi there athyrarose,

Does the device has a letter assigned in Disk Management? How does it appear over there?
Regarding your question whether it is safe to uninstall it, I would say yes. You will not lose any data.
As darkbreeze already suggested, testing the drive is a good idea. You can use the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics though, as it is brand specific software.

WD DLG tool: http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=810&lang=en

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD
 
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Darkbreeze

Darkbreeze

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Jun 24, 2014
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Yep, the WD tools are good too. Any worthy drive test will work for the purpose of establishing fitness though.
 
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