Accessing My External Hard Drive.

[Danny]

I plugged in my WD External HardDrive and the laptop (HP - Windows Vista) is
recognizing it in the Device Manager under USB Ports but not in My Computer
for accessing. How can I get it to show up again (like it used to) in "My
Computer"?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Danny

 

[Bob I]

Take a look at it in Disk Management to give it a drive letter(See
Windows Help and Support for a link to Disk Management)

 

[Danny]

It wouldn't allow me to initiaze the drive...it was listed as unknown and now
it does not show up in disk management. So, I still can't access but the
computer is still recogonizing it the USB area in the device manger.

 

[Ian D]

It wouldn't allow me to initiaze the drive...it was listed as unknown and
now
it does not show up in disk management. So, I still can't access but the
computer is still recogonizing it the USB area in the device manger.

What you are seeing under USB ports is the USB interface
of the external drive enclosure, not the drive itself. You could
have a failure of the enclosure's drive interface, or the drive
itself. Also, the power supply could be faulty. It may supply
enough power for the enclosure, but not power up the drive.

You haven't said if it's a 3.5" or 2.5" drive. The only sure
way to test the drive itself is to remove it from the enclosure,
and test it directly in a PC. If it's a SATA drive, this would
be fairly easy, whether it's a 3.5" or 2.5" drive. If it's a PATA
drive, it gets more complicated, and really complicated if it's
a 2.5" PATA, as the interface is different. For that, you would
use a 3.5" to 2.5" adapter, or install it in a laptop that uses a
PATA interface, and boot a drive diagnostic from a floppy
disk.