WD 2TB Elements Drive not showing up despite seemingly being in perfect health?

Software Western Digital Dashboard
1

I bought a Western Digital external hard drive a little while ago (honestly not sure how long) and finally plugged it in to run a full backup overnight before sending my computer in to be repaired under warranty.

However, when I plug it in it simply doesn’t show up in the windows explorer.

I followed advice online to go to disk manager in windows and initialize it from there. No dice. The disk shows up, but is x-ed out and attempts to initialize it were initially met with an error message. Now when I try to initialize it it’s simply greyed out.

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Checking around online indicated that most disks that throw errors like that have been in use for a while. Mine has not been used. So I downloaded the WD dashboard to see if it had any insight, and it certainly finds the disk but declares there’s nothing wrong with it.

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I’ve also tried to get info from powershell, which again shows a maddeningly vague “OK” and no other information.

I have moved it between USB ports, that didn’t do the trick. I have also tried it with another laptop, no joy there either.

So, I’m a bit stuck on how to proceed. Anyone got any advice?

2

Join the club.
I have the same problem.
My device is seen across my home network, in my router, in file explorer etc.
If I disconnect the drive, it disappears rom the system as you would expect and returns when it is plugged back in.
All I get when i try to access the drive is ‘Can’t reach this page’.

How else can I access the drive to make any modifications to settings if I can’t access the drive?
I am getting bored with this system now.

Best of luck with you problem.

3

Look at the Model Number of the selected Hard Drive in the Screenshot you posted …

WDC PC SN250 SDAPNUW-512GB-1014

Thats not the 2TB Elements Drive … that’s a 512GB SSD reporting 97% Health.

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4

The drive is showing as it is not initialized. You can try the below mentioned 2 different methods to resolve the issue:

Method 1. Use Disk Management to fix not initialized error on an external hard drive

  1. Connect the uninitialized external hard drive to your PC.
  2. Press Win + R keys, type: diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
  3. Find the uninitialized, unknown external hard drive with I/O device error > Right-click on it and select Initialize Disk.
  4. Then set the disk to initialize and set the disk as MBR or GPT.

After this, you may reboot your PC and keep all changes. Now, your external hard drive will be recognized and read by Windows again.

Method 2. Run CMD to repair I/O device error on not initialized external hard drive

This CMD command would erase all data on the uninitialized hard drive, which you can later restore after repairing the external hard drive not initialized, with the help of any data recovery or partition recovery software:

  1. Press Win+R > Type: diskpart and hit Enter.
  2. Type: list disk and hit Enter.
  3. Type: select disk F and hit Enter; (replace F with the drive letter of an uninitialized external hard drive) .
  4. Type: clean and hit Enter.
  5. Type: convert gpt or convert mbr and hit Enter.
  6. Type: create partition primary and hit Enter.
  7. Type: format quick fs=ntfs and hit Enter.
  8. Type: assign and hit Enter.
  9. Type: exit and hit Enter.

Hope it helps!

5

Hi,

As per the screenshot, you selected the wrong drive. I can see there is a “select drive” option available in the top right corner. Just select the faulty drive and see what it says.