Getting Windows to recognize USB hard drive

[Ray Geiger]

I have a 500GB USB drive that was used as recording device with Direct TV. I no longer have Direct TV but would like to be able to use the drive. Windows XP and Windows 7 both acknowledge its plugged in, but do not see it as a disk drive. In fact they just plain don't see it. I don't care about any data that is on it. I just want to format it. It's a Western Digital My Book Essential.

 

[USAFRet]

Does it appear in Disk Management? If so, delete all partitions and reformat.

 

[Ray Geiger]

Does it appear in Disk Management? If so, delete all partitions and reformat.

It doesn't appear anywhere that I can find. Both versions of Windows acknowledge a USB device has been plugged in but neither will indicate what exactly it is. Explorer shows no additional drives.

 

[Ray Geiger]

It doesn't appear anywhere that I can find. Both versions of Windows acknowledge a USB device has been plugged in but neither will indicate what exactly it is. Explorer shows no additional drives.

 

[USAFRet]

Disk Management, not Explorer.

 

[photonboy]

Disk Management, not Explorer.

Exactly.

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows7/ht/disk-management-windows-7.htm

The drive is likely there but formatted in a way that's not showing up properly. You should see a drive with roughly 500GB. Right-click the graph and delete and/or format until it shows up a solid NTFS "healthy" drive.

 

[Ray Geiger]

Disk Management, not Explorer.

I finally got it. Turns out to be a bad USB cable!!!!!!