Drive in Device Manager, but not in My Computer

[Ahroo]

I have an external firewire hard drive which has been running trouble-free
for several years. Every so often, the computer no longer "sees" the drive
and I have to reset the firewire bus by disconnecting and reconnecting the
drive. It has always worked just fine after doing that.

This evening, I again could not "see" the drive, so I followed the usual
steps, except that it hasn't helped. My Computer and Windows Explorer do not
show that I have this firewire drive connected, yet Device Manager DOES show
that it is connected and supposedly is working properly. By the way, the
little green light in front does light up and I can hear the disk spinning,
so I assume that the problem is not with the drive itself. Also, I use it as
a pass-through for attaching my digital videocamera into the PC, and Windows
Explorer does recognize the camera, so I assume that the cables are all ok
and the bus is functioning.

Any thoughts as to why Device Manager would recognize the drive, but not My
Computer or Windows Explorer (by the way , I am running WinXP Home edition)?
And any thoughts as to what I can do to get it working again? I am at a
loss as to what to do next and would appreciate any suggestions you might
have.

Thanks.

Laura

 

[Wayne Stallwood]

Right Click on "My Computer" and select "manage" (this won't work from a
shortcut to my computer)

In the management window that appears look below "Storage" and click on
"Disk Management" Does the drive appear there, it should appear both in the
Top and bottom pane if everything is working. Get back here with the
results.

 

[Ahroo]

Hi Wayne,

Thanks for trying to help me with this problem!

I only see the drive listed in the bottom part, not the top. In the bottom
part, it has a little red symbol on the disk icon, next to the icon it says
Disk 2, and under that says "Unknown", then shows disk capacity of 74.53 GB,
then under that says "Not Initiallized". In the right pane, it says 74.53
GB, unallocated.

Laura

 

[proph3t]

sounds like you may have to do a format on the drive and make the new
filesystem, ntfs

 

[Ahroo]

I'm really hoping to find a way to not lose the data on the drive. A friend
suggested that I "uninstall the drive via remove hardware, then plug it in
after rebooting the computer. The "found new hardware" routine
should re-install the drivers or ask you for the disc with the drivers" but
I'm waiting to hear back from Wayne with his suggestions before trying this.
Thanks!

 

[old jon]

My advice to you is don`t do anything as drastic as reformatting the drive
at this stage, but you did say `several years`, so it is possible the drive
has `gone for a burton`. Has the external got a USB option ?. if it hasn`t,
then it might be necessary to get the drive out of the enclosure and put it
into a PC as a slave device. Then it is possible to run a series of tests
(from the drive manufacturer)on the hard drive to prove its state.
best wishes..J

 

[Ahroo]

Thanks for your input! Do you know, if I "initialize" the drive - is that
the same as formatting? Will I lose all the data on the drive? Thanks.

Laura

 

[old jon]

Don`t quite know what you mean. Initialise ?. ..J

 

[Ahroo]

Well, in the Computer Management screen (under Storage and then Disk
Management), it shows the drive, but as "not initialized". If I right click,
one of my options is to "initialize" the drive. I don't want to do this if
it will erase all of the data on the drive (as a "format" would definitely
do).

Laura

 

[proph3t]

this may be similar to making the drive "active" as in the old format
in DOS. I believe it may only be necessary for the boot disk to be
initialized

proph3t

 

[Wayne Stallwood]

I only see the drive listed in the bottom part, not the top. In the bottom
part, it has a little red symbol on the disk icon, next to the icon it
says Disk 2, and under that says "Unknown", then shows disk capacity of
74.53 GB, then under that says "Not Initiallized". In the right pane, it
says 74.53 GB, unallocated.

This is not very good news, It looks like something nasty has happened to
the drive and Windows no longer recognises the partitions. Either it has
been formated on an Apple or Unix box or Severe damage occurred because the
drive was banged or perhaps unplugged as it was being written to. (Even in
the case of the former, Windows should recognise the existence of the
partitions and so you wouldn't be seeing that Unallocated figure)

The fact that it's not even being given a drive letter indicates that the
partition table is probably screwed. You can try right clicking on the
drive as it appears in the disk manager and see if under properties you
have any options to repair it, but if Windows is not even recognising the
existence of the partitions you are probably out of luck in that respect.

On the right click menu as previously described what options do you have
that are not greyed out ?

The initialize option you are seeing is an option to re-partition the drive
which is not a good move to make unless you have resigned yourself to the
data contained being lost, clicking this option will (if the drive is still
functional but corrupt) result in a empty unformatted drive.

Apart from getting back here with the other options you see in those boxes,
I think you have these options.

Check that it definitely isn't your machine by trying it on another (I think
this is pretty unlikely as Disk management is seeing it as a drive...just
an unpartitioned one)

Look at some reputable drive recovery software that is advertised to recover
lost partitions or damaged partition tables (I've had reasonable success in
the past with problems like this) although they only usually work on
internal drives so you would have to first carefully remove the drive from
the external case and install it as a second drive in your machine.

Employ the services of a good Computer Repair centre, they may already have
the recovery software to hand. If you lived in the UK I would take a look
at it for you.

Evaluate how much that data it contains is worth to you and investigate the
services of a Data Recovery Company (warning this is NOT cheap)

Sorry Laura, I hate giving good people bad news, get back to us with the
other options that are listed in the Disk Manager.

 

[Ahroo]

The only options are Initialize Disk, Properties and Help. Nothing is greyed
out, nothing along the lines of repair. I tried to uninstall and then
reconnect after rebooting the PC, hoping that it would see it as new
hardware, but it did not - still showing only in Device Manager, and as not
initialized in Disk Management.
I have contacted Western Digital's support, but I'm still waiting to hear
back from them.

This is all very strange. I did none of the things you mentioned might have
caused this ("Either it has

been formated on an Apple or Unix box or Severe damage occurred because the
drive was banged or perhaps unplugged as it was being written to."), so

I'm am baffled by this. There was nothing on the drive that is so crucial
that I MUST retrieve it, but there are enough things that I would LIKE to
retrieve that I didn't get backed up before this happened, that I am
reluctant to take any action that will wipe the drive clean until I know
that I have no other options.

I will try the other ideas you suggested - first I have to find someone with
a firewire port to connect it to.
If I do try to install this as an internal drive, I am a bit confused about
how this would be done since it is a firewire drive, not IDE. Do I still use
the firewire cable? Or is there someplace on the drive (when removed from
the shell) where the ribbon attaches? What does being installed internally
do that being attached externally cannot? Sorry if these questions are dumb,
but there's a LOT about computers that I obviously don't understand!

I really appreciate your patience and willingness to help!

Laura

 

[Ahroo]

I forgot to mention (this may not be important info, but I just thought I'd
mention it in case it helps with diagnostic steps) - when I open up Disk
Management, I see and hear the errant drive working for a moment as it is
being accessed - the red light (which indicates it is working - reading or
writing data) comes on briefly and I hear it spinning for several seconds.
So obviously SOMETHING is being communicated between it and the PC, which is
why I think that the data is still there and somehow retrievable. If it were
totally dead, I would think that there would be no recognition, no spinning
that would occur.

Thanks again!

Laura

 

[old jon]

Hi Laura. I don`t want to end up conflicting with Waynes advice, so let`s
just tell you. WD do a set of test tools, which can be downloaded, and put
on a floppy disc, or possibly CD. These tools can be used to carry out tests
on your drive. As the tools generally can`t `see` USB, it becomes necessary
to remove your drive from its external caddy, and put it into your PC, so
the tools can be used on it. Hope this makes some sense to you. best
wishes..J

 

[Wayne Stallwood]

I will try the other ideas you suggested - first I have to find someone
with a firewire port to connect it to.
If I do try to install this as an internal drive, I am a bit confused
about how this would be done since it is a firewire drive, not IDE. Do I
still use the firewire cable? Or is there someplace on the drive (when
removed from the shell) where the ribbon attaches? What does being
installed internally do that being attached externally cannot? Sorry if
these questions are dumb, but there's a LOT about computers that I
obviously don't understand!

No they are perfectly reasoned questions, you are not being dumb...just
logical...unfortunately computers don't always work in logical ways.

Internally (on the external drive) there is a standard IDE drive (like what
is in your machine) It's just an IDE drive in a box with a firewire
interface.

The reason you may have to fit it internally is that most drive doctor style
software I have seen only knows how to access Internal drives on either the
IDE or SCSI controllers (in your case IDE)
The way Windows works your drive doesn't truly appear as a drive until
Windows recognises it has partitions it can access. Disk repair software
gets around this by accessing drives at a slightly lower level without
going through a drive letter so that it can repair drives that are in such
a state that they don't get letters assigned to them.

It's a good idea that you have contacted WD support as sometimes they have
manufacturer specific test and repair tools that may help you.

Despite the disk activity you are seeing as the disk manager starts I stand
by my earlier diagnosis that something nasty has happened to the drives
partition table. Hopefully WD will come back with something useful (if so
then please post the results to this group so that others may learn from
your headache) but if not then I think the option of running some disk
repair software is your best bet (unless you fancied spending $$$ on
professional data recovery)

If you do decide to fit the drive internally then you may have to post back
here to get help setting the master/slave jumpers in the back of the drive
correctly.