I’ve scoured the internet for solutions and found none so here I am. First off, I’m on windows 10 and have this trouble with the external hard drive on multiple computers.
4 TB My Passport does not show up in the file explorer. The power light on the device powers on when plugged into the usb port of my computers. It shows up in device manager under Disk Drives. Under device properties, the message “This device is working properly.” is shown. It does not show up at all in the disk manager. Clearly it is not working properly though because I am unable to access it at all.
On one of my computers, the device does not even appear in device manager and it is as if I never plugged it in to the USB port, however the light on the drive comes on.
I have tried uninstalling the device and reinstalling it. I have tried restarting my computer. I was planning on installing a fresh copy of windows 10 on a computer tomorrow and using the device to back up the files but I won’t be able to do that until I figure out how to fix this or get a replacement if it really is broken.
i know it sounds simple, but the first thing i do whenever i have usb hard drive problems is to try another usb cable in case the original has gone dodgy … and is supplying power but not data
For those interested, I was able to solve the problem. Installed third party disk management software that recognized 4TB of unallocated space on the drive. I used to the program to format the drive and that solved the issue somehow. Not sure why windows disk management wasn’t cooperating. After the format, the computer was able to recognize the disk and it shows up in both windows disk management and file explorer. Strange.
Hello forknerb, I’ve got the same problem, could you share the program that you have used please? Although I don’t really want to format the drive because I’ve got all my important files there that I want to access to but I would like to try if the program could recognize the disk. Thanks.
I’ve had this problem with my Elements 2TB USB 3.0 drive. Changed it to a different computer, which it worked on before, and everything was gone. It turned out to be the permissions for the drive in Windows.
Go to File Explorer and click on THIS PC. Choose your drive and right click it with the mouse and click on PROPERTIES. Then the tab SECURITY. You will see a box containing group or user names. Under this click on EDIT. Under the Group and User Name box again click on ADD. Type in “Everyone” and then OK. You will now see Everyone added in the box. Click on it and below the Group box you will see Permissions for Everyone. In the Allow column, check the box (click) on FULL CONTROL. Click on OK a couple of times and you’re done. The external drive should now function on all your computers (and anybody else’s). If you’re concerned about somebody accessing the disk, you can enter your specific user name instead of Everyone, but you will have to do this on each computer unless your user name is exactly the same.
Hi emaniega, did you find an answer to this problem, I am having exactly the same issue.
Windows recognises and displays in ‘Devices and Printers’
Can see a Partition in Disk Management but not seen in Windows Explorer.
Hi vishalp (or anyone else), did you find any solution to your problem? My issues sounds the same as yours. Ran the WD Drive Utilities, the quick and the complete drive test both failed. The power light comes on on the drive and it is shown in Devices and Printers, but not in This PC. Would like to retrieve the files from the drive if possible.
