I have a passport essential, I bought this product a few years ago while deployed over seas. It worked fine for the past 3 years, but recently I have noticed that it will not show up in My Computer on my desktop, and when I plug it in my computer does not even show that new hardware has been detected. It will, however, work with my laptop just fine. Recently my desktop has been reformated, but this problem has been around before that happened. I would like to find a solution that does not involve loosing all the data on my external, as my laptop is not currently working and there are alot of photos from my deployment and other important documents on it then I would not want to lose. Thanks for any and all help
Hello there
If your Passport hard drive works with your laptop but not with your desktop computer, be sure you connect the Passport hard drive directly to the USB port of your computer. If is not recognized on the front USB ports try on the back.
Check in Disk Management to be sure the Passport drive shows as online and healthy by Disk 1, Disk 2 or the disk number the system assign to the disk.
If the drive shows as Not Initialized or Unallocated, you may need to initialize it or format it to be able to use it.
Be aware that formatting the drive will erase all the information off it, so you may need to recover your data first.
See the link below for information how to access Disk Management.
Also, be sure your Windows OS is updated with the latest service pack.
