Older WD Elements drive not appearing in WIndows

I have a WD Elements model WD10000EB035-01 drive that is not recognized by my Windows 11 PC. When I plug it in or unplug it from the PC, I get a ding, but the drive never appears in File Explorer. The blue power light is on. I’ve tried another PC and a different cable with no luck. Anything else I can try? It has a lot of old photos that I would like to get back.

In Windows, look under Disk Management. You should see all of your connected drives. Find you Elements drive. If Disk Manager reports it’s healthy, make sure it has a drive letter assigned. If not, you can right click on it and select Change Drive Letter and pick an unused letter. My USB attached Samsung drive is Drive F:. Note it’s formatted NTFS.

If the drive is not Healthy you may need recovery software to restore your files.

When was the last time you used this drive?

Check Disk Management in Windows. If your WD Elements drive appears:

  1. Healthy: Ensure it has a drive letter. Right-click > Change Drive Letter and Paths to assign one.
  2. Not Healthy: It may require a windows data recovery software to retrieve all your photos.

Also, try connecting the drive to another system with a different cable or port again. If it still isn’t detected, there may be hardware issues, When was the last time the drive worked?

Thanks. The drive does not appear under Disk Management. That is my issue. It has been at least a year since I last tried plugging it in.

Yes, that is an issue. Just to clarify, there’s no indication of any drive in Disk Management? Even if it says Unallocated? Can you post a screenshot of your Disk Management?

The “ding” indicates Windows did attach a USB device. Can you check in Device Manager under Disk Drives and see if it show up there? Also look for any “cautions” indicating a corrupt or missing driver.

Thanks for the response. The drive does not appear in Disk Management at all:

I do find it in Device Manager as an Unknown Device. I tried to find a Windows Driver but it did not find anything. Is there a WD driver that I need? All the doc seems to imply that I should not need one.

Thanks