WD My Book Essential 1T External Hard drive won't show up on PC

[Heather Potter]

I have a WD My Book Essential 1t that won't show up under Computer on my pc. I've checked Disk Management and its not showing up anymore - it was Drive F yesterday (and every day since I bought it 6 months ago).

Using a Toshiba laptop, with Window 7 on it.

 

[scout_03]

did you try to connect it to another system ?

 

[sorrad2002]

I had the same problem. In Dísk Management I got information that memory of the device is "Unallocated". No files recognized.
Try first to disable the device driver, then enable it. For me did work.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey Heather. I'm sorry you're going through such trouble with your drive. Did you remember doing anything out of the ordinary before or when this happened, or to have heard any unusual sounds/noises coming from the drive? The guys have given you some pretty decent advice. You should also try the drive with a different USB cable and preferably with a different computer as well as @scout_03 has suggested and try @sorrad2002's solutions as well, because reinstalling the drivers might also help. Have you had similar problem with other USB storage devices since this has happened?

Hope that helps.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Nicholas Steel]

I had this same problem, the device appeared everywhere except Windows Explorer and similar places which prevented me from actually using the device! I figured out a solution to this, simply add/create a partition on the device if one doesn't exist and then add a Drive Letter to the partition via Computer Management.

I only needed to apply a Drive Letter as I already had a partition created, this made Windows isntantly recognize the device as a drive and display it in Windows Explorer. I use a Western Digital Elements Desktop drive.