External Hard Drive Problems cannot access

[elgordo38]

I cannot access my WD external 1 TB hard drive. I have a lot of movies on it and hate to loose them. I have tried Disc Manager to rename the drive from the new name of H back to the previous name Elements but I keep get the message that the drive must be formatted and also H:/ is not accessible the parameter is incorrect. If I could only open it and recopy the 936GB of movies I would be happy hate to loose them. I also understand that there are processes where technicians can read the disc but it is an expensive proposition. Any and all help would be appreciated.

[CharlieH]

WRONG FORUM

MOVED to Computers

[mmh8]

in disk manager I would be changing the name of the drive to a different letter to get it to work. not sure if that is what you have done alreay? however I found that with a different OS on a machine, win 8 instead of 7 my externals were not read on the machine but could be found by 1. changing the letter of the drive, or 2. using a different machine.

You sound like you know what you are doing, but sometimes just checking a win update ( assuming it windows ) will work.

alternativly download and create a linux usb os and mount the drive via your current machine.

[crabdog]

Create a linux boot on USB drive and you should be able to access and copy the files from there.

[Chicog]

I assume this is a USB drive.

Open "My Computer" (Or "This PC").

Does it get a drive letter when you plug it in?

Is it making any funny noises?

Edited June 9, 2015 by Chicog

[Amusements]

_{Have you tried a different USB lead?}

[elgordo38]

_{Have you tried a different USB lead?}

Yes

[elgordo38]

I assume this is a USB drive.

Open "My Computer" (Or "This PC").

Does it get a drive letter when you plug it in?

Is it making any funny noises?

Its an external 1TB hard drive WD

Its been renamed H drive but the real name is Elements and I cannot rename it back to this

No noises but is taking a fairly long time to boot up.

[elgordo38]

in disk manager I would be changing the name of the drive to a different letter to get it to work. not sure if that is what you have done alreay? however I found that with a different OS on a machine, win 8 instead of 7 my externals were not read on the machine but could be found by 1. changing the letter of the drive, or 2. using a different machine. You sound like you know what you are doing, but sometimes just checking a win update ( assuming it windows ) will work. alternativly download and create a linux usb os and mount the drive via your current machine.

Cannot access it in DM. I have tried a different machine same results. Could you tell me more about a linux usb os as your the second one to mention this. Thanks for your help.

[elgordo38]

P.S. I have plugged the 1 TB into the TV USB and the TV reads all the movies on the drive. Kind of weird.

[Beetlejuice]

I assume this is a USB drive.

Open "My Computer" (Or "This PC").

Does it get a drive letter when you plug it in?

Is it making any funny noises?

Its an external 1TB hard drive WD

Its been renamed H drive but the real name is Elements and I cannot rename it back to this

No noises but is taking a fairly long time to boot up.

Don`t think you understand Chicog`s question, so I will try to explain to you in layman`s terms.

First, power up the external hard drive. Next, plug in the USB lead directly into your computer USB socket, do not use an extension USB lead.

Either immediately or within a few seconds the computer should make a donk sound, which means your computer has recognized the device. Sometimes a detected new hardware message will popup on the right hand side of the task bar.

Next, go into My Computer. Peruse the drives available by the letters on the drive names. Click on each of them to see if one of those is your external hard drive.

If not successful, try checking the plug in USB connections and power connector on the external drive to ensure there isn`t a loose fitting. If still unsuccessful, try plugging in the USB connection to other USB sockets on your computer.

Edited June 9, 2015 by Beetlejuice

[IMHO]

Sounds like you might have to disassemble the unit, install the raw drive into your machine, and hope that something like R-Studio can recover the data

[Chicog]

P.S. I have plugged the 1 TB into the TV USB and the TV reads all the movies on the drive. Kind of weird.

Not necessarily a good sign.

It sounds like the drive is on the fritz to be honest, as someone said, try and plug it into a different machine with a different USB and a different cable, and make sure all the connections are solid.

Otherwise there is a good chance that the drive is on the way out.

When you say it reads the movies on the drive, do you mean it can display the directory or actually play the movies?

[RKASA]

If it mounts in linux or a TV USB port (often linux) and if then installed in windows you get a error at boot for that drive, but won't connect usb - then often it is some sort of smart drive check.

I have a drive I have to mount in linux works just fine or plug directly into the windows PC and tell it to boot on error due to the smart drive. It will not work from USB with windows due to this smart drive check. Drive was said to be failing anytime 4 years ago.????? Once mounted as sata in windows as a data drive and you get past the error on boot (turn on full view during boot) normally F1 to continue - go to the maintance area and turn off the smart drive for that drive and it will boot without errors, but still if you remove it it will not work with usb on windows OS and if you reinstall it you will get errors again until you turn off the smart drive - that is why maybe it works in your TV.

I do lots of images so not worried about mine being a data drive in a windows box it is backed up - I installed it there and have waited years for the failure to come - still waiting.

If you only have a laptop and this is ext. usb drive your going to need a linux live CD - boot that up and mount the drive USB with linux - then mount the c; drive of the windows on the laptop to linux live cd running and copy the contents to C if you have room or copy to another usb drive if you have the ports.

There are a number of ways this can be done - worked around etc.

Put on some coffee first.

[seajae]

if its an external hard drive it may be a problem with your pc, can you try it on another pc to see if it works or if that pc can read the movies as well. If not you can get a recovery tool that will read it and be able to save the movies for you, I use mini tool power data recovery, brilliant software and easy to use. My pc started to have a similar problem with my camera card, kept telling me it needed to be formatted before it could read it so I just leave it in the camera and use the camera software. Have reformatted it and it still does not read it so its something win 7 does, xp pro was so much better and it can still read the card when I turn that pc on

[DogNo1]

If you get the drive to work, copy your movies immediately to another drive.

Are you sure that the drive is mounted correctly? I don't know what version of Windows you are using but go into Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Disk Management and if the drive appears there, right-click and assign a different drive letter to it. You can make the drive name anything within the character limit, ie., Test Volume. I often have drives that connect but are not mounted due to other drives having been added to the computer, etc. Make sure that you are not using a USB hub. I recently had two go bad. Be aware that if you take the drive out of its USB enclosure and hook it up in your computer as an SATA drive, it will have to be reformatted and you will lose its contents.

If you can boot your computer from a CD or a USB flash drive, you can boot from a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu and mount your problem drive as well as a new USB drive and immediately copy everything to the new drive. Some of these little USB drives allow the MICRO USB cable to fit loosely in their socket. If that is the case with yours, find a cable that fits snugly.

If none of these steps work, it could be as Chicog says - your drive has gone bad. In that case, a professional data recovery shop is your only choice.

On my recent return to Tokyo, I had THREE external drives go down. Something in the external drive enclosures that I bought went bad. Fortunately, I had everything on several other drives. Next, I found that the files on my cloud storage service may not be retrievable. It has something to do with a change in their software and I'm working on it with tech support. I'm now looking into Amazon S3 due to their 99.99% reliability for my future cloud storage.

Good luck getting back your movies!

[fvw53]

If you live in the Bangkok area I would take the HD to the shop of WD in Panthip Plaza (I forgot on which floor but if you leave the elevator on the correct floor then the WD shop is on your right side after only a few other shops) : if they cannot open it on their available PC's then they will tell you who eventually can solve your problem

[NeverSure]

P.S. I have plugged the 1 TB into the TV USB and the TV reads all the movies on the drive. Kind of weird.

Sounds like it might be something wrong with the PC - even the USB port.

1. Can you try another port? Sometimes if one is bad they are all bad if they are on the same mobo channel and it's bad.

2. Plug something else that's USB into the port(s) on the computer to see if they work.

[NeverSure]

Windows MtMgr assigns a drive letter when the external is connected. Very few people assign a static letter (or know how). I can't imagine the factory assigning a static letter because that would be computer specific to override MtMgr.

Drives (drive letters) are software as proven by MtMgr, Disk Managment, assigning static letters, Fdisk, Diskpart and so on.

If Windows is failing to assign a proper drive letter it either doesn't see the HDD due to a hardware or Windows (software) problem or the HDD or enclosure are bad.

Since the TV sees and uses it, the next thing to check is the computer.

[ksamuiguy]

Some good info, thanks guys.

[mmh8]

elgordo, you can google making a usb boot disk, it will take you a little bit of time to do but there are all sorts of tools you can put on and os, everyone has their own favorite, I guess google will produce the top hits and the most popular os to use. Just make sure you havve a usb with at least 16 GB these days I guess.

[elgordo38]

I want to take this opportunity to thank one and all who contributed advice to me. Your a great/helpful bunch out there. Sometimes we loose track in slamming/teasing one another but when push comes to shove well we all row the boat in the same direction. As the drive is full of movies I anticipate I can still hook it up to the TV and play them like a movie library although it is a bit awkward. I am going to call my TV guy whose name I also got from TV and show him the highlights of all the suggestions made by you all. Some people really went into detail and of course it all went over my 77 year old head but I am never to old to learn. What a great bunch.

[Burl Ives]

Try "HDD Regenerator" it worked for me!

[lagavulin1]

My wd elements is full of wd cr##p and mounts via a virtual cd. Have you some how enabled this ? You have to right click the virtual cd and select program " unlocker" then enter a password. Just hit enter if you have not set one before. Go back to explorer and you should see a new drive listed which contains your content.

[DPGumbypgh]

I have a similar problem with a windows 7 laptop and usb hard drives. For some reason (windows update?) it would not show the usb drive. Tried all sorts of fixes etc and none of them worked. Eventually tried deleting the windows driver for the USB hard drives. Bingo the USB drive then shows up as an external hard drive. The fact that another device can access the hard drive means that if it is not a problem with the USB connector then it is a driver issue. Still haven't found a fix for it, but as it works fine without the driver will wait until the windows 10 upgrade is available.

[NeverSure]

I want to take this opportunity to thank one and all who contributed advice to me. Your a great/helpful bunch out there. Sometimes we loose track in slamming/teasing one another but when push comes to shove well we all row the boat in the same direction. As the drive is full of movies I anticipate I can still hook it up to the TV and play them like a movie library although it is a bit awkward. I am going to call my TV guy whose name I also got from TV and show him the highlights of all the suggestions made by you all. Some people really went into detail and of course it all went over my 77 year old head but I am never to old to learn. What a great bunch.

The one thing I'm not clear on is whether other USB devices will work in your computer's USB ports. The external works with your TV setup but not with your computer. The problem appears to be with the computer.

If no other USB device works on the computer then it is the computer and it could be hardware or software. (motherboard or motherboard drivers.)

One step at a time we can run this to ground but we need the information we ask for.

In the meantime look and see if you have the driver installation CD for your motherboard. You may or may not need it. We can always download and install a small program which will positively ID your motherboard and then find the driver download.

I was able to diagnose a bad HDD controller on a motherboard for a friend the other day when Windows was throwing out HDD error messages. It's a matter of progressively checking one thing at a time.

Do other USB devices work in that port on the computer? Do they work in all USB ports?

[elgordo38]

I want to take this opportunity to thank one and all who contributed advice to me. Your a great/helpful bunch out there. Sometimes we loose track in slamming/teasing one another but when push comes to shove well we all row the boat in the same direction. As the drive is full of movies I anticipate I can still hook it up to the TV and play them like a movie library although it is a bit awkward. I am going to call my TV guy whose name I also got from TV and show him the highlights of all the suggestions made by you all. Some people really went into detail and of course it all went over my 77 year old head but I am never to old to learn. What a great bunch.

The one thing I'm not clear on is whether other USB devices will work in your computer's USB ports. The external works with your TV setup but not with your computer. The problem appears to be with the computer.

If no other USB device works on the computer then it is the computer and it could be hardware or software. (motherboard or motherboard drivers.)

One step at a time we can run this to ground but we need the information we ask for.

In the meantime look and see if you have the driver installation CD for your motherboard. You may or may not need it. We can always download and install a small program which will positively ID your motherboard and then find the driver download.

I was able to diagnose a bad HDD controller on a motherboard for a friend the other day when Windows was throwing out HDD error messages. It's a matter of progressively checking one thing at a time.

Do other USB devices work in that port on the computer? Do they work in all USB ports?

Yes everything else works. 2 other external hard drives work and about 7 USB sticks. The problem external will not work on a friends computer or my laptop or my g/f's computer. I see mention that it could be a driver problem but cannot understand why it shows using other id's like G,H,I,F, on the other computers but will still not open.

[fritzzz25]

Give this a whirl - http://windows.microsoft.com/en-ca/windows/change-add-remove-drive-letter#1TC=windows-7

Not a guarantee but you never know....

[smedly]

sounds like the drive is hidden after some windows update or the partition is hidden or the security settings got messed up in windows, there seem to be a lot of similar issues on the net

read this especially post 9 about unhiding a partition

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/263154-32-hard-drives-external-element-detecting

[NeverSure]

So far, it works in a TV device but not in multiple computers. Failing in multiple computers must mean something with the drive and not the computer. Working in the TV device but not any computer must mean it's software on the drive which goes from computer to computer.

I really don't know how the whole volume could be hidden in Windows on multiple computers unless the drive isn't initialized.

OP, click on your start button and type Disk Management and look above for diskmgmt.msc and open it. Do you see the external? If you have just one internal and this external HDD (two) it will be Disk 1.

If so is it outlined in black or in blue?

Whatever you do after this don't choose format or anything that hints at delete.

If it's blue does it have a drive letter? If it does right click on it and choose change drive letter. Choose drive M for now to be sure it's available.

If the outline is black, right click on the term Disk 1 to the far left and choose Initialize. It's possible for a drive to be there but be inactive. That is a software issue on the HDD itself which would go from computer to computer. I must admit I don't know how it works with the TV device because I know nothing about them.

Edited June 12, 2015 by NeverSure