WD External 1TB drive shows "device not ready"

[Kiernanjp]

I have a WD 1TB External ULTRA Drive. Prior to yesterday, it worked fine on my laptop running Windows 7. Last night I attached it to my SMART TV, thinking it would be accessible there. It was not. Since then, when I re-attach it to my laptop, the indicator light on the drive stays solid, is NOT recognized by Windows Explorer

So far I have tried these options:

DISK Manager sees is as a device but its UNALLOCATED. When I try to initialize it, it comes back with DEVICE NOT READY.

DEVICE MANAGER sees the drive ok.

For whatever reason hooking it up to the TV somehow screwed something up. I have done numerous reboots, power off, several utilities from MS and WD all to no avail.

NOTE I DO NOT have access to any other computers. I assume the cable is fine because although Windows Explorer won't mount it, the other utilities see it, but do not know what it is.

 

[SuperSoph_WD]

Welcome to the community, Kiernanjp!

I'm sorry to hear about your WD Passport Ultra drive. Unfortunately, sometimes connecting the external to a different operating system or device (like your Smart TV) messes up the file system. However, I'd suggest you to try uninstalling and re-installing the WD Passport from Device Manager ( http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc725782.aspx ) After a reboot, plug and play the external and wait until it installs the utilities again.
Another thing you can try is assigning a different drive letter to the HDD through Disk Management. Here's a tutorial from our KB that explains how to do that: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=esHghV

Keep me posted! Hope it helps though.
SuperSoph_WD