I am having an issue with My Passport 1 TB Essential ES external hard drive. My Windows 7 PC recognizes the hard drive and starts to install the device driver software. I get an error that no driver can be found. I have downloaded a driver from the WD Download page but it still refuses to recognize it. I am at a loss. What should I do?
I just had one of these replaced with an El;ements model to eliminate the driver bs.
That said, you don’t actually need to install the driver to use the disk. You just don’t get the encryption ability etc. In my case driver was installing fine and I disabled it under Device Manager to no ill effect. Only issue not having driver installed is Windows will ask everytime you connect the driver, when installed disabling driver stops that.
I’ve never installed any of the bundled software.
Thanks for the insight. So the driver is not the issue! However, I still can’t access the drive. Disk Management wants me to initialize the disk. It shows the disc as Unknown and Not Initialized. What should I do?
To quote Rodge in reply to Thoufeekh , who reported the same output from Windows 7 Disk Management the day after your post:
Hello,
It seems it has not been formated yet.
Go to
for instructions on how to format it.
