External Hard Drive not recognised by Windows 7 via USB.

Wise Natcho

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Oct 18, 2011
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I have just bought a Samsung S2 external 1TB HDD but it is not being recognised by Windows 7 on my PC.

I know the drive is working ok, because I have a dual boot system and when using XP it works fine.

Having read through some similar problems listed on this website I have tried booting up with it plugged in, tried reinstalling the Windows driver for mass storage devices and also tried using the disk managment feature to asign a path to it. (This method works but only last for a few days before it no longer sees it!)

I have the same problem when tring to use my WD external HD, however USB memory keys and devices work fine. I'm running W7 Home Premium x64 with SP1 installed.

Any ideas or help would be greatly apreciated!

**UPDATE: Just tried doing a fresh install of windows7 and it worked fine until I restored my Documents, programs and settings via a System image - so now back to square one again!!**
 
You've found the answer to your problem yourself.
You really need to reinstall the OS and the programs that you need, I wonder why you installed the OS and then ended up using a backup image..... isn't that like a job done twice?
Instead of all this double work, just install the OS again, install selected updates and programs, copy the files from your documents to the new documents folder if needed, and then create a new image.
Basically some of the files in the OS may have become corrupted, thus, the devices keep disappearing.
Go the easier and saner way by installing the OS again, programs again and forget about the earlier image that you had created.
 

Wise Natcho

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Oct 18, 2011
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Alyoshka thanks for your reply,

You've found the answer to your problem yourself.
You really need to reinstall the OS and the programs that you need, I wonder why you installed the OS and then ended up using a backup image..... isn't that like a job done twice?

TBH I would ideally like to fix the problem without having to re install all my software again, hense using the system image. The main reason is however that I happen to be lacking the installation disks for much of the software, making this an expensive and time consuming solution.

Any other ideas would be very welcome first, before I admit defeat and go down the clean install route!
 
You can try repairing the OS using it's installation disc for recovery of corrupt systems files within the system. There is a utility within windows to let you do it, I think it's called Systems File Checker.
 

teddy326

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Apr 9, 2014
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My WD-10EAVS used occasionally to backup and then switched off - so very little use over several years suddenly was not recognised on Win xp/7/8.1 machines. Tried changing lead still same.
Tried CMD>diskpart>list volume and it was not shown
Tried CMD>list disk and it was shown as disk 1.
Tried CMD>select disk=1 that worked.
Tried CMD>assign letter=Z
Response: There is no volume specified
Please select a volume and try again

Downloaded WD lifeguard.
Lifeguard will test it successfully.
Downloaded Partition Wizard and made a boot disk - PW will also surface test it.
Be careful here = you could destroy all your data with the wrong command.
Partition Wizard showed the disk as Primary & "hidden" status.
Maybe if its Logical instead of Primary then that is OK too for backup.
Changed the status to "none"
Now the disk has a letter