Hello,
So there seems to be something seriously wrong with my WD Elements 1042 external portable hard drive. :'(
It was working just fine two days ago, but when I plugged it in yesterday it didn’t show up in my explorer (I have Windows 7). I tried a different wire–from a different device-- and got nothing, I plugged it in to a different computer with Windows XP, still nothing. Both computers recognize the device. The name comes up when I remove it with the “safely remove hardware” option. It also is listed when I go to “Devices and Printers” but I can’t do anything to it. I’ve clicked on properties, I’ve tried uninstalling/re-installing it, updating it, everything that it would let me do.
I also installed the WD Formatting tool, but when I tried to format it it displayed this message: “The version of firmware on your device does not support changing the block size of your WD external drive.”
Then I downloaded the WD Life Diagnostic tool, and when I open it and run all the tests: the quick test, the extended test, and even write zeros so it can format my drive, it tells me that the test is complete but absolutely nothing happens. So when I clicked on the view results, it told me that besides passing all the tests the device has a 0.00GB capacity, which is odd, because it should be 500GB capacity. That does not sound like good news to me.
Is my device done for? Has anyone else had this problem? Please help!
Luckily, I’ve backed up my data on my laptop, so if I lose it it’s not the end of the world, I just want to be able to use my drive again. 
