1 TB External Hard Drive Problem

[Walter Goldschmidt]

I got a large external hard drive today and it's instructions say to go to
disk management and do format and partition. I messed up and deleted the
drives volume. Now it is not listed in disk management. I looked everywhere
to get it back and can't figure it out. How do I make Vista recognize this
drive again so I can partition and format it?

 

[Richard Urban]

Reboot. See if it is now visible in Disk Management.

 

[Walter Goldschmidt]

Rebooting didn't help.

--


Walt

Reboot. See if it is now visible in Disk Management.

 

[Richard Urban]

You are saying that the drive itself is not visible in Vista's Disk
Management utility?

Go to device manager. Go to drives and uninstall/delete the drive. Shut down
the computer. When you restart is the drive seen in device manager after a
redetection?

If not, see if the drive is seen in the computers bios. What is the drives
designation?

--

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP
Windows Desktop Experience

Rebooting didn't help.

 

[Walter Goldschmidt]

In device manager under disk drives are 6 USB devices.
1. - ST3250310AS ATA device
2. - Teac USB HS-CF card USB device
3. - Teac USB HS-MS card USB device
4. - Teac USB HS-SD card USB device
5. - Teac USB HS-xD/SM card USB device
6. - WDC WDIO EAVS-00D7B1

It allowed me to delete the top and bottom one. The other 4 reinstalled as
fast as I could uninstall them. After rebooting this did not help either.
The external drive is not listed in computer or disk management. There has
to be a way to get it back.

 

[Richard Urban]

Again, is it listed in the bios? If not the operating system can never see
it either.

 

[Walter Goldschmidt]

I don't know how to check it in the bios. How about a helping hand here with
a brief instruction on how to do that?

 

[Richard Urban]

Every computer has it's own methodology to get into the bios. Turn off the
computer. Turn it back on. Watch the screen carefully. You will see a
message along the line of "press "whatever key" to enter the bios. Then look
around the bios for a page that shows the drives connected to the computer.

Exit the bios **WITHOUT** saving any changes you may have inadvertently
made.

 

[Curious]

Device 1 is a Seagate 250GB SATA 300 drive see:

Before you deleted it did you check its properties and driver status?
Have you tried disconnecting the drive and then reconnecting it after the
system is running?
Can you hear the drive running when you turn on its power switch?

Device 6 appears to be a Western Digital SCSI disk.

Same questions for it.

 

[RalfG]

External drives don't typically show up in BIOS. I can't say if that's true
for E-SATA but USB and firewire don't. Those don't show up anywhere until
after Windows loads their device drivers. The external drive should have
entries in Device Manager. As well as being listed under Disk drives it
would also be listed under USB controllers as a USB Mass storage device, or
under IEEE 1394 devices. Not sure where-all E-SATA drives show up.

Some external USB harddrives are not detected properly if they are
connected and running while the computer is booting up. In that case Windows
installs a dummy unidentified device driver in its place. Cycling the power
on the drive often does nothing to help Windows find it because the
unidentified device driver is actually on the USB port that the harddrive is
connected to. Moving the drive to a different USB port would be one
workaround. First choice would be to uninstall the unidentified USB device,
turn off the drive then reboot. When Windows is loaded turn on the external
drive and it should be detected properly again as a USB Mass storage device.

After Windows redetects the drive it should hopefully reappear in the Drive
Management list. If not you may need to use the external drive
manufacturer's utility to partition the drive.

 

[Richard Urban]

You are right. I strayed from the path of it being an external hard drive.

 

[Walter Goldschmidt]

Under universal serial bus controllers I found 2 USB mass storage devices
and removed them. I then rebooted the computer and it replaced the drivers
for those 2 devices. I then plugged in 1 TB drive and checked under computer
and disk management and it did not appear. Nothing was listed under disk
drives. There were no IEEE 1394 devices listed anywhere. I sent a email to
the seller too see if he could give me some advice. Maybe I should contact
the manufacturer.

 

[Richard Urban]

Maybe the drive has failed. It happens.

 

[Walter Goldschmidt]

I figured it out. Under disk management at the top of window is listed
drives C: & D: which are 2 partitions on my internal hard drive. Down below
in window are listed disks 0 thru disk 6. Disk 0 is my internal hard drive.
I then highlighted each disk and right clicked and then clicked on
properties. I did this for each disk until I found my 1 TB external hard
drive. I then put cursor in blank area to right of that disk and right
clicked. It then allowed me to create a volume and format it. That fixed it.
I knew there was a way. Thanks for every ones input sometimes you have to
figure it out yourself.

 

[Richard Urban]

You threw me through a loop by saying that the drive was not even seen by
disk management.

We/I can only work with what we/I are presented with.

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Walt.

Congratulations! ;^}

My I suggest that you assign a name, or label, to each volume (primary
partition, logical drive, flash drive, etc.); the name will be written to
the drive (or other device) and will not change as you shift the device from
one port to another. Drive letters are not written to the device; they are
transient and can shift each time we reboot or each time we unplug or plug
in a USB flash drive. The name can be assigned in several ways; I usually
do it in Disk Management in the Properties screen for each device. So my
"Win7x64" volume is always "Win7x64", even if Win7 calls it Drive X: and
WinXP calls it Drive D:.

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP
Windows Live Mail 2009 (14.0.8064.0206) in Win7 Ultimate x64 RC 7100

 

[Walter Goldschmidt]

Don't take me the wrong way Richard. Without people like you to help me with
my computer problems I wouldn't have had the opportunity to learn so much
about computers in the last year. I consider myself way above average when
it comes to computer knowledge. Disk management I learned about from you
from a posting you made on 4/28/09. I'm still learning how to use it
properly. I thought it would be listed in the top window. I wasn't even sure
what the listings were in the bottom window. By messing around in disk
management I was able to figure it out. Thanks for your input.

 

[Curious]

Richard was referring to your post of the 9th which said
"
The external drive is not listed in computer or in disk management.
"