I can't access external hard drive

[Graceful61]

Hi,

I can't get access to my external hard drive.

If I go to device manager I see that it needs to be initialized, but when I try to do so I get the message that it's read-only.

The hard drive contains all my documents and photos so I really hope there is a solution. The hard drive seems to be completely full.


Randi

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Randi, & Welcome to Tom's Hardware!

Give us as much info as possible about your external HDD, manufacturer, model, size, connection, and if anything happened just before you lost access to it, like using it on a Win-XP, unplugging it before it was safe to remove, a power outage.

Then if you could go to Disk Management, and upload a screenshot of the Disk Managment dialog box,with the lower graphical section, (Photobucket, or Imageshack, etc.) and post it here, we can best ID the problem and hopefully get you going again.

 

[Graceful61]

Hi Randi, & Welcome to Tom's Hardware!

Give us as much info as possible about your external HDD, manufacturer, model, size, connection, and if anything happened just before you lost access to it, like using it on a Win-XP, unplugging it before it was safe to remove, a power outage.

Then if you could go to Disk Management, and upload a screenshot of the Disk Managment dialog box,with the lower graphical section, (Photobucket, or Imageshack, etc.) and post it here, we can best ID the problem and hopefully get you going again.

Hi John,

Thank for your reply.

The hard drive is a WD My Passport 070A USB Device (WDBAAA5000ABK-00)

It has been unplugged and unused for a couple of weeks. Nothing special has happened to it as far as I know. I just plugged in to another computer than the one we normally use it for. Both computers have Windows 7.

I have posted a screenshot here: http://flickr.com/gp/79897402@N08/91fiU5

It's in Norwegian, but I reckon you'll be able to recognize the information you need.

Randi

 

[John_VanKirk]

Hi Randi,

The WD passport is recognized by the Win-7 OS.

What does Gjelder ikke mean? Is the a GPT partition(GUID Partition Table)? This is a 500GB external drive? and did you set it up with a GPT partition style initially?

Also, on this computer, go to Disk Management (right click My Computer, Manage, in the lower left of Computer management, click on Disk Management.

Upload a screenshot of Disk Management especially the lower graphical area showing both Disk 0 and Disk 1.

That may help determine the problem.

 

[Graceful61]

Hi Randi,

The WD passport is recognized by the Win-7 OS.

What does Gjelder ikke mean? Is the a GPT partition(GUID Partition Table)? This is a 500GB external drive? and did you set it up with a GPT partition style initially?

Also, on this computer, go to Disk Management (right click My Computer, Manage, in the lower left of Computer management, click on Disk Management.

Upload a screenshot of Disk Management especially the lower graphical area showing both Disk 0 and Disk 1.

That may help determine the problem.

Hi,

I don't know how it was set up initially, all I know is that it has been working perfectly for a year.

GJELDER IKKE means DOES NOT APPLY.

More screenshots here: http://flickr.com/gp/79897402@N08/y34fW8/

Randi

 

[MidnightDistort]

I have had this problem where i ended up reformatting the hard drive, bad IDE cable cord was the cause. Something like that might have happened to you. In my case i just reformatted it because i had a backup of the data. In your case however, you would need some sort of software that can recover the data. Unfortunately i didn't try recuva but you could give it a shot http://www.piriform.com/recuva/download

I have SpinRite and all it did was correct some errors, but it did not fix the drive to it's original state, i had to reformat the drive.