Disk management refuses to assign a disk letter. Help!

[Andy G]

I have a WD MyBook external hard drive, capacity 250GB. It is a USB device
and needs no drivers, or at least it didn't when connected to my previous HP
notebook running XP.

When I connect it to my latest HP notebook (Compaq 6720s), it shows up in
Device Manager, which lists it as working properly. However, there is no
sign of it in Explorer or in Computer. When I look in Admin Tools under
Disk Management, it is shown as Disk 1, but with no drive letter. If I
select it and right click and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths", I get
an error message saying:

"The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view
is not up to date. Refresh the view using the Refresh Task. If the problem
persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management, or
restart the computer."

As you will guess, neither refreshing nor restarting makes any difference.
What on earth do I do to perform this apparently simple operation?

Any help appreciated.

Andy

 

[Andy G]

No, it does not work. It is not shown in Explorer. It has no drive letter
anywhere.

Andy

 

[Andy G]

Trying to do what you say, but assign apparently only works on a selected
volume, (not a partition). I can list a partition for the disk in question
but I cannot list or select a volume.....

Any ideas?

 

[Roberto le Cornielle]

I have a WD MyBook external hard drive, capacity 250GB. It is a USB device
and needs no drivers, or at least it didn't when connected to my previous
HP notebook running XP.

When I connect it to my latest HP notebook (Compaq 6720s), it shows up in
Device Manager, which lists it as working properly. However, there is no
sign of it in Explorer or in Computer. When I look in Admin Tools under
Disk Management, it is shown as Disk 1, but with no drive letter. If I
select it and right click and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths", I
get an error message saying:

"The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view
is not up to date. Refresh the view using the Refresh Task. If the
problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk
Management, or restart the computer."

As you will guess, neither refreshing nor restarting makes any difference.
What on earth do I do to perform this apparently simple operation?

Any help appreciated.

Andy

Have you initialized and formatted the external HDD ?.

rgds
Roberto

 

[Andy G]

Well, there is stuff on it, which is my only backups! I'm loath to format
the drive as I cannot backup to DVD first, as that has stopped working too.
So if the format fails, I'd be in a difficult place.

From what I can glean from various utilities, Vista, (and Diskpart), see no
volume on the drive, although they both see a partition...

My old XP machine mounts the drive straight away, and I can see and use all
files.

 

[Curious]

What happens when you try and assign a Drive letter to the Partition?
My world book backup uses the drive letter I assign to the partition.

Well, there is stuff on it, which is my only backups! I'm loath to format
the drive as I cannot backup to DVD first, as that has stopped working
too. So if the format fails, I'd be in a difficult place.

From what I can glean from various utilities, Vista, (and Diskpart), see
no volume on the drive, although they both see a partition...

My old XP machine mounts the drive straight away, and I can see and use
all files.

 

[Andy G]

What would be the way to do that?

I don't seem to be able to do anything via "Disk Management, (see my very
first post), and as far as I can see you cannot assign a drive letter to a
partition using "Diskpart", only to a volume, which does not seem to exist.

Is there something else I can try?

What happens when you try and assign a Drive letter to the Partition?
My world book backup uses the drive letter I assign to the partition.