Unable to format & partition new “bare” WG 2TB Red drives

I took out two (nearly full) 1TB Seagate drives and replaced them with new 2TB bare WD red hard drives. Now the system takes a very long time - literally minutes including a fair bit of that time with the drives clicking – to get to the point that I can elect to go to the COMS Utility (this had previously taken just an instant). Finally at the utility, the new “bare” WD drives actually do show up in the CMOS but when I continue and Windows 7 loads (unusually slow at this too), they are not detected by Explorer. I presume that is because they need formatting and partitioning. But since Windows doesn’t detect them, it can’t format them.

In the past I would just download the W/D data lifeguard utility, but now for newer drives, I’m being directed by the site to use the new utility called “Acronis WD Edition”.

I read the instructions at http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1211/Clicked the download on this page and this took me to http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=enAnd after reading everything, the instruction summary seemed straightforward, namely:

  1. Click on the Download Now button in the upper right corner.

  2. On the Language page, choose the language version of software you want to download.

  3. Download the Acronis True Image WD Edition Software to your computer.

  4. Make sure you close all programs, and click on the EXE file. The install wizard will carry you through the installation process.

  5. You will need to reboot your computer once the installation is completed.

I felt reasonably confident, so I clicked on the Download Now in upper right corner. It downloaded tih_s_e_14192.exe. I clicked Run, selected Yes to User Account Control to allow. Then Acronis True Image gave three options:

   Modify,

   Repair,

   Remove.

I had never installed Acronis before and couldn’t find it in Programs so this didn’t make any sense at all, but I selected repair (so that whatever is there would be made right). I get the response “Please insert the disk”. It doesn’t say what disk and I have no idea what to do so I cancel. And then I have to confirm cancel. Meanwhile Acronis true image is still showing the progress bar. After a while I get a second “Are you sure you want to cancel?” to which again I confirm for the third time.

Can anyone help me with formatting and partitioning my new “bare” drive WD drives?

Hello,

Please follow the link below to get the WD DLG tool to assist you with the formatting.

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/940/session/L2F2LzMvc25vLzEvdGltZS8xMzY2OTI3MTY4L3NpZC8qTjhoRURvbA%3D%3D

You shouldn’t have any issues with this app.

Thanks,

I went to the link and I made a fresh download of the “Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows” tool and ran it as Administrator, but it was unable to detect my new drives.

Regarding the troubleshooting suggestions at the suggested site: All the cables must properly attached and working fine because the drives show up in CMOS, but I do worry about the suggestion there to “make sure that the jumper settings are correct based on the diagram on the drives label”. Although there appear to be pins for jumpers on these new SATA drives, there are no jumpers or jumper diagrams.

I eventually succeeded in downloading and running the newer tool, Acronis, and it couldn’t detect the new drives either. So I’m still in limbo.

I have the exact same issue.  WD20EFRX cannot be detected.  BIOS detects but i can’t use Win 7 to partition/format.  HELP