HDD Not Recognized internally, but Recognized Externally Via USB

[jlee14]

Hey Guys,

Hoping someone can give me advice. After reinstalling windows 8 (and updating to 8.1) I noticed my secondary HDD (2TB) was not showing up under my computer. I checked Disk Management and it showed up under that, but gave me an error when I tried to format it, saying Windows was unable to. I pulled out the drive and connected it to an external mount and sure enough, the PC recognizes it when connected via USB. I tried formatting it this way an re-connecting it internally, but now it won't even show under disk manager. it also does not show in the bios. Any ideas what else ii can try? Really baffled as to why this happened.

Thanks,
Justin

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey jlee14. That's very odd. Did you have any problems with the drive before the Windows update? Try connecting the drive to a different SATA cable or better yet another computer to see if the drive behaves the same way. If you can connect it again externally and if it is recognized I'd recommend that you download the manufacturer's diagnostic tool and run the tests to see if the drive has any problems.

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD