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Repair guides and support for external portable storage by Western Digital including the My Book series, My Passport and others.

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Western Digital Elements External HD doesn't show connected on PC?

When I connect the external hard drive to the USB drive on the computer the drive doesn't show up. I heard this could be a platter that has gone bad. Is there any thing I could do to fix this problem or get the data off of the external hard drive?

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Have you tried another computer and/or another USB port? this could be caused by plenty of other issues as well, i.e. bad wiring, bad connection, failed circuit board as well as a failed drive. Data recovery can be expensive and is not easy to do for the DIY'er. So look for the things that could be done by you.

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I have a WD 4TB Elements Portable External Hard Drive, USB 3.0 with the same problem. I've only had it for 13 months and the other day it just stopped working. Tried it on numerous computers. It shows up under disk drives, but not disk management. I've done everything I can think of, but can't get it to be recognized. Is there any way I can retrieve my data or get it to work?

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my 1 tb wd element is not working when i connect it it is not showing in disk management but in it shows in disk drive under device manager how ican get data from it

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Joel, try to connect the HDD to another computer. Also check under disk management to see if your external drive shows there. Also make sure that the drive has a drive letter assigned to it. Go into disk management and check if your drive shows there. If it shows but it does not show a drive letter, make sure you give it one. Also, try to connect the drive to a USB port in the back of the computer, avoid using a USB hub. You can also try uninstalling the usb driver and once you restart the computer, the drivers should get reinstalled by the operating system. After that reconnect your drive. Furthermore, make sure that the cable is in good working order. Try to either use a different cable on your drive, or check the cable by connecting it to a different device. Hope this helps, good luck.

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the computer does not recognize the drie, cables are good, usb is good. what can i do

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I know i am a bit late with making this comment i think that it's the driver because i have 2 thinkpads both different models my E555 all i have to do is plug my WD 1TB in and it works fine but when i plug it into my x260 thinkpad sometimes it show but when i look into device manager it show (!) problem with the driver looking into it for some strange reason it will not migrate to the Thinkpad x260 i also looked at the different versions of windows that i am using my x260 is more up to date then the E555. In my opinion i think either Microsoft discontinued the drive for this external or it is a Firmware issue dealing with newer hardware or Western Digital have a error with the driver for newer systems. Because the laptop it works on is kind of old.

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If you somehow cloned on external drive the main ssd/ hdd from one laptop, windows will assign a new identifier on the portable one, and also re-initialize the partition table.

It is not about firmware

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This solution worked for me:, pretty much what Oldturkey said.

Computer Management, Disk Management,

Right click the (Healthy) Primary Partition - of the size of hdd without drive letter,

Select "Change drive letter and paths..."

Add...

I had a Toshiba hdd from a friend that wouldn't even initialize so couldn't add a drive letter, I ended up very pleasingly pulling it apart and smashing it to bits before throwing it in the trash, very disappointed it didn't have the massive magnet in it that the old hard drives used to have. (Bought the friend a new hdd double the size to compensate - was told there was nothing on it anyway)

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but.....after doing this work..... it doesnt when it reconnect

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wd 2gb elements not working even not seen in disc management. Pls help some one.

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Hi ,

This link may be of interest and if it works copy your data off the drive before it fails in case this method might not work again

WD my passport ultra 2TB is not showing up on explorer..

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I just bought a brand new wd elements 6 tb drive. It was not recognized by windows, disk management, or explorer. I found I had to have it plugged into the blue usb ports, which i believe are 3.0 I have 4 other usb ports which must be 2.0 and the hard drive isnt recognized if it is plugged into one of them.

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I had another external hard drive that failed last week. Windows cannot open this device, access denied. I tried everything, thus purchasing the wd elements drive. I used RESTORA to get all my pictures off the seagate, copied them to my internal drive on computer, and then backed up to the wd elements.

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Windows make some drives MBR/ GPT Frankenstein's monsters.

Hopefully this post will help someone (this morning I almost lost 4TB of data from a WD Enclosure) https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?...

It describe how to fix partition table. You can do it from a bootable/ live linux USB so no install needed. Just follow the tutorials linked in that post.

In Windows the partitions were visible, but on linux it reported free space.

As a side note for 2023, Windows 11 at least, *initialise the disk as GPT* automatically, so it mess up the partition table.

Good luck for whomever read this.

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Joel wird auf ewig dankbar sein.
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