Hi,
What I find is that you are facing two problems :
while you are connecting white light flashes,
and after disconnecting yellow light flashes.
When white light flashing it means - It’s to show that the drive is connected. It’s totally normal, most hard drives do this
And secondly Flashing yellow or red lights indicate a problem with the VFD that should be checked. ( Variable frequency drive ).
Don’t worry you can try to follow the following methods to quickly fix the problem.
Clean Up the Virus that Stops WD External Hard Drive from Working Properly
If there is virus in your computer or WD external hard drive, it may also cause the hard drive to not work properly. So make sure to clean up all the virus or malware on your PC and WD external hard drive before trying to connect the WD external hard drive to PC again.
Test the WD External Hard Drive Angain after Changing the USB Cable
Sometimes, the computer can’t recognize your WD external hard drive because there is something dirty on your computer’s USB port or USB cable. So you can try to clean the USB port first, or change the USB port, or connect it using a different USB cable to check if the WD external hard drive show up on your PC now.
Turn On the USB Root Hub to see if the WD External Hard Drive shows up on PC
Step 1. Click Start, and then type “devmgmt.msc” and hit Enter.
Step 2. Open Device Manager > Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
Step 3. Right-click on USB Root Hub, and then Click Properties and Power Management.
Step 4. Uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power”.
Repeat the steps mentioned above to turn on all the USB Root Hubs in the list and reboot the PC. Then, see whether the WD external hard drive now shows up on your PC or not.
Fix WD External Hard Drive Blinking but Not Working on Windows
For Windows users, the common factors that lead to this error include virus attack , partition issue , driver issue , or wrong file system .
Solution 1 Show the hidden devices
If the light blinks when you insert the WD external hard drive into the computer, that means it can be detected by the PC but it is hidden. To fix this problem, you can unhide all hidden devices.
First , type devmgmt.msc in the search box and hit Enter .
Second , in the Device Manager , click on the View tab > Show hidden devices .
Third , reboot the computer and insert the WD external drive into the computer again to see if it is shown up.
Tip
If your computer system is Windows 10, you can type in Show hidden devices in the search box. It will navigate to the target directly.
Solution 2 Uninstall WD external drive and connect it again
First , type in devmgmt.msc and press Enter .
Second , expand Universal Serial Universal Serial Bus controllers and right-click on each USB device > Uninstall . Check whether there is an unrecognizable drive or not, if there is any, uninstall it.
Third , go to This PC/My Computer and check for the external drive, if it doesn’t show up, restart the PC and reconnect the WD external hard drive.
Solution 3 Change the drive letter to make WD external hard drive show up
Step 1. Type in Disk Management in the search box.
Step 2. Find and right-click on the WD external hard drive > select Change Drive Letter and Paths …
Step 3. Assign a new letter to your WD external hard drive and save the change. Now you should see it on your computer.
Solution 4 Change Registry
Modify the Registry is another way to fix the problem but it may be a little complicated to computer novices.
Step 1. Type in regedt32 in the search box > OK .
Step 2. In the left side menu, select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Control > Class > {4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} .
Step 3. Delete upper filter or lower filter and retry the external drive.
