External Hard drive not showing. SORTED.

Rocket

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Tony
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Ok, So some of you may have seen my previous issues with an WD external Hard drive, which i have given up on.

As i have had some good results over the years, I have purchased another freecom external hard drive. But i am unable to see it, usually i go into "my computer" and my other drives icon appear there, however this new / second hand one is not visible. I have tried it on my windows 7 and my windows 10 computers, but just the same issue..

I found it under "Drives & Printers", as a Samsung, image below is a screen snatch. I have made contact with the seller and he tells me after he had backed up his files, he just formatted it...Any help please would be grateful.


Freecom, External hard drive.jpg
 
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You need to run Disk Management to see how it looks there. The seller may have deleted the partition in which case there is nothing for File Explorer to see. If it shows in Disk Management then creating a new simple partition and formatting it should fix the problem.

You can either type 'disk management' into the Search box and select the obvious offering or, as I do, right click on my Computer, select Manage and go to Disk Management from there.
 
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Sometimes in disk management it just needs a drive letter assigning.
Choose one you can't have already e.g. On card reader - like 'X'
 
Thanks Guys, Very grateful.
That has solved the issue, i can now see and open the drive. Just shows you how helpful this group can be...

? Reformat it first., I wonder if i can do the same with the WD ,
 
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A simple reformat probably won't have any effect but it's worth trying to delete the existing partition/volume to see if that releases all the available space. But that one sounds thoroughly screwed by the software on it so no promises....
 
? Reformat it first., I wonder if i can do the same with the WD ,
On Linux sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb status=progress (with only the WD plugged in*) would nuke any troublesome partition info and let you start from a clean drive, but I can't find a Windows equivalent, and the ports of dd seem to be old 32-bit versions. :(


*Assuming one internal HDD.
 
also look at updating your OS looks like W7?
 
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