Ive had my 500g my passport external drive for less than a month. Now it seems that it has died on me.
I set up my HD by the book and used the smartware software and it worked perfectly for three weeks, accumulating over 85gb of data.
I plugged it in last night and the software said there was no device attached, I searched computer for E drive…nothing, no C or D drive either. Then windows explorer stopped working for 5 minutes. I tried a few times.
Safely remove does wontt work, hangs. I unplug it and it shows itself for a second or two while windows explorer starts up again.
Tried booting it along with the computer, still not visible in disc management. Computer says I need drivers for an unkown device. So. Unistalled drivers, downloaded them again from the website. Reinstalled drivers and software. Tried to format the drive with the quick format tool, error message reads
Ive tried this drive on two other computers even bought a new cable (usb2/usb3) seems like Ive wasted my money on both.
I need help with My wd external 3tb hardrive… My computer acknowledges that I have it plugged in and all but it wont show up with the other drives on the computer where it used to appear… I need to know what I have to do to get it to show up again
This is for both of the posters who just jumped on this thread and posted no usefull information. You should have started a new thread about your problem instead of just jumping on this one. What OS are you using? Look in Disk Management and see if the drive shows up there. Look down where the bars are what does it say? Does the drive have a letter assigned and is it online? Is this a new setup or was the drive working before?
I’m running Vista Home Basic 32bit service pack 2 with Intel Celeron 900 @ 2.20GHz. Virus free and with “tune-up utilities 2011” installed.
I initially quick formatted the drive in disc management to NTFS and assigned it the letter E.
As I mentioned everything was cool untill I plugged it in about two days ago. When you go to check “computer” in the start screen, the window shows no devices (internal hard drive or cd drive) the warning “Windows explorer has stopped working” appears, then my system freezes up for 5 to 10 minutes. The light will flicker on the drive and the “be-bong” noise is heard as if some thing has been removed prematurely.
The onlt way to check disk management before the system freezes up again, is to plug the drive in, then go straight to disc management. Once again this shows no drives, not even my partitioned hard drive (C).
When you safely remove the drive, nothing happens, even after an hour or so. Physically removing the usb plug shows all devices for a moment. Only then does the system return to normal.
I’m not hopeful for a fix for this, but, if it is possible that this unit is bricked, and not owing to negligence, I would gladly accept that answer. I dont think I can trust a dodgy drive like this to be transported all the way to Singapore with thousands of photos of the family on it, only to get there and show the relatives nothing at all. All said, some evidence that the drive is “unfit for the purpose it was intended for” would be enough, unless I am doing something blatantly wrong.
Ive got a week before I travel, so still time to return this to the shop and get a different Hard Drive.
I know how you feel, I lost 20 hours of top notch lesbian porn and 100’s of pics of my girlfriend making it out with other girls. Guess I gotta download a load more and have a few more partys thanks to WD, lol.
Taking the drive back for a refund and buying another brand is not the solution I am looking for when it comes to *retrieving* nearly a TB of data off my WD external drive. I’m glad you’re feeling whole and complete, but I am finding out that there are countless others who are getting hosed by WD failures with new drives. Here’s a good link to another thread. Interesting note, we’re no longer allowed to comment on this thread:
The above thread is EXACTLY the line of discussion I would like to follow up on.
What I am finding out is if you want to have your data backed up, it needs to be backed up simultaneously to THREE external drives, because you can almost be guaranteed that TWO of those drives will be toast within a year or two.
sad thing that lots of people think backing up data is simply moving it from their desktop/laptom onto an external drive… that is not a back up! in todays day and age, important data MUST be kept at least in 2 different places. Failure strikes when you least expect it
