Windows 7 Not Recognizing External Hard Drive (Western Digital MyBook)
February 5th, 2009 | Posted by in Tech/Web
I recently installed the Windows 7 beta on my home computer and love everything about it. The operating system as a whole is great, and I have no complaints… especially when compared to Windows Vista. Anyways, I recently tried to backup my photo folder on my computer to my external hard drive, and I realized that it was not listed in my list of available drives. So I went to my device manager and it wasn’t found there either. I then tried disconnecting and reconnecting it with no luck. When I open up the USB tree in the device manager, I find an “Unsupported USB Device”, which I am assuming is my external hard drive.
Just to make sure that my drive still works, I brought it to work and plugged it into my computer, and it works perfectly. So there is something with Windows 7 that is causing my external hard drive to not be recognized. Any suggestions?
I’m using:
- Windows 7
- Western Digital 500GB MyBook External Hard Drive
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Had the same problem with not recognizing the external hard drives. It seems that the usb to mini cable’s length may also be a problem. I went from using a 10″ usb cable to using a 3″ to 4″ usb cables and windows detected the external hard drive just fine. As odd as it sounds, using a shorter usb cable may solve this problem. Give it a try on every port.
OK, this is a dumb problem with a dumb fix. i have an older maxtor external usb drive, i have always had problems with win7 and usb hd. this time after a fresh install of win7 ultimate 64 on a nvidia machine.
After lots of headbashing i went to device mgr/usb controllers/> DISABLE standard enhanced pci to usb host controller. !! the very second i disabled it it recognized my drive and works a charm.
thank you all for the input and this thread. my problems solved. hope this helps others as well.
Error code 43 = device is failing ie it’s not your computer, or drivers, or cables etc. Time to back up and avoid WD!
List of error code definitions: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310123
To recover lost data you can’t beat= http://www.grc.com/sr/spinrite.htm
WD code 43 happens under XP, Vista, Win7….
I have been foolish and have 3 WD drives and all end up displaying Code 43 on an infrequent basis? No more WD for me!
To make them work again, I uninstal the driver for the failed drive, via device manager. Shut down the computer. Because the on button won’t work at this point, I unplug all leads from the external HD then push the on button several times with leads unplugged. Reconnect external HD. Restart the computer. All should now work until your next code 43 error, if your lucky
Good luck
For what it’s worth I’ve had the same issues with my WD 500Gb, also faced similar problems with several Sandisk 8Gb Compact Flash cards connected to the USB port via an ‘Integral’ USB card reader. Seems I can temporarily fix the fault by switching to different USB slots.
About to try fix #62…
I had the Same Problem….and this simple fix worked…..Go to:
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/w7itprohardware/thread/549594b1-1229-48d2-b271-1d92fd7657b0
First, please check if the hard disk can be found in Disk Management.
1. Click Start, type diskmgmt.msc in to the Search box and then press Enter.
2. Please check if the drive appears here. If so, please assign a drive letter to this drive. To do so:
a. Right-click the drive, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths
b. Click Add.
c. Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, and then either accept the default drive letter or click the drive letter that you want to use.
d. Click OK.
3. Please restart the computer and check the issue.
If the issue persists or if the hard disk cannot be found, please Try adding the new hardware from the “Device Manager”. To do this, follow these steps.
1. Click Start, type devmgmt.msc and then hit Enter.
2. Click “Disk drives”.
3. Click Action menu, click “Add legacy hardware” and follow the instructions to add a new hardware.
4. Check to see if the hardware is added successfully.
If not, please move on to remove the filter drivers:
1. Click the Start Button, type regedit in the “Start Search” text box and then press ENTER.
2. Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
3. Right click the {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} entry, choose “Export”, select Desktop in the Save in box and type backup in File Name. Click Save.
Please Note: The backup file is on the Desktop and named backup.reg. We can simply restore the registry by double-clicking the backup.reg file.
4. Highlight this key ({4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}), on the right pane, and then check if Upperfilters and Lowerfilters value are present. If so, please right click on the values and select “Delete” to remove them.
Hope this helps.
I think I have the answer, plug your cable in. If windows 7 shows the message unknown device don’t remove the usb. instead turn the switch on the back of the external hard drive off for a few seconds then back on. Windows 7 should then for some unknown reason find the correct drivers and your buffalo hard drive will now work. This worked on mine.
Cliff
hotdesignerwear.com
Solution:
For windows-7,64bit, how to use external HDD if it is not recognized.
Go to start -> Computer -> right click and click manage ->double click Storage ->) double click Disk Management. ->click on Disk and the right click on right side “Healthy(Active, Primary Partition)” -> click on “Change Drive Letter and Paths…” -> Click on add button -> Click on “Assign the following drive letter.” It will take a moment and you will get an external drive reflected on my computer.
Have windows 7
cant hook up my old external backpack cd rewriter which is still rock solid.
Am not computer knowledgable.
7 will not accept the old driver.
or any old updates.
Any suggestions?
Thanks.
This sometimes happens due to it not being assigned a drive letter or the letter is already assigned — especially when plugging / unplugging USB drives.
Easy to solve.
1) Control panel ===> Adminitrative tools ===>Computer management===>Storage==Disk management.
2) Scroll down — You’ll see a disk without a letter.
3) Right click on it ===>Change drive letter and paths
4) Assign it a letter
5) Exit
6) now you should see it again in Windows explorer etc etc.
(from jimbo 45)
Worked for me!
My geek son said the USB ports only have so much power going to them and we need an external USB hub with it’s only power source to solve the problem. There is enough power to make the light blink but not enough to run the devise.
Hope this helps
This is small thing that everybody cn handle. But you will be carefull very well. First of all get yourself a window xp bootable disc. then follow these step one by one/
Step 1:
plug the external disc vis usb
insert your window xp cd on cdrom
Reboot your computer
then goto your bio setup and make your cdrom as first
save the settng then it will reboot
and ask you to boot from cd press any key
after initializing it will show you all the disc avalaible on the disc
locate your external drive and format it
then press F3 to reboot and remove the cd
now start your computer normaly
goto my computer you see your external disc ready to use\
that is all
There is heaps of stuff on the net re’ not being able to use old external HDs after upgrade to Windows 7. Much of it about Western Digital drives. If you have a drive that came with a CD like the Maxtor then load whatever it came with back to a Windows XP computer.
Equipment: Dell XPS M1710 lap top & Maxtor One Touch II external hard drive.
My Situation: Updated to Windows 7 from XP SP3 including using recommended MS file transfer program outputting ‘mig’ file to Maxtor. After upgrade unable to access Maxtor. The Maxtor also had other backed up data I wanted so suggestions about reformatting not an option and allocating a drive ‘letter’ option not available anyway.
After some frustrating days gave up on W7 and reverted to XP. Eventually I had printing, Internet working and my old e-mail messages back.
But still not able to access the Maxtor (was tempted many times to bin it!)
Much research on Internet …
Resolution: (Most of this from bits and pieces of stuff people have posted on the net – thanks to them!)
Load original Maxtor installation stuff onto an XP computer – ie the HD application software and drivers (from original CD in my case but available on Seagate Internet site, I think). Any XP computer will do and probably 2000 and ME etc as well – no need to revert back to XP on your computer. You just need to have access to a computer running the old O/S.
Reboot and guess what – I can now see the Maxtor drive (after putting Maxtor drive access password in when prompted) and have copied the ‘Mig’ file to lap top HD and am busy doing same with other stuff on the Maxtor.
It seems it’s the security software on the Maxtor that might be the problem.
Next Steps: Busy copying at the moment so I have not tried this yet. The Maxtor application has a remove ‘security’ option somewhere and I expect that once this is removed that the Maxtor may possibly work with Windows 7. Meanwhile I’m going to copy the Mig file and other data to a W7 compatible external drive I bought recently (a terabyte for $99AUD hard to resist – Aussie $ about 98c US today for reference).
Soon, I hope, ready for another try at Windows 7 install using the original ‘easy transfer’ mig file now on my new Ext HD …
THIS WORKS
uninstall drivers from device manager for WD and disconnect re connect issue will be resolved
Problem solved?
Background; Bought a new PC in April after my old one started waving the white flag. Backed up all my files on Freecom External Drive. Plugged drive into my new Window 7 PC and it worked. Then after 2 weeks or so was not recognised. Spent a fortune ringing the “helpline” with no solutions and the PC has been back to the suppliers twice.
The cure? Found an old Belkin USB hub in the drawer and plugged it in. Immediately recognised by W7. Then plugged in my external drive into the hub. That too was recognised and away we go!
Well, for my part I have solved the problem. Windows 7 did not recognize the WD Essential 750MB drive I have.
I have addressed the control panel / system and safety / administrative tools / create and format hard disk partitions. In the list of our hard drives notebook appears, to this we will select and right clicking will change the name of the unit (may be allocations for conflicts with the name of unity and the unity that does not appear in the browser) then perform this step should display the drive and access to it without problems.
Greetings.
Excuse my English, I translated quickly to the google translator from Spanish to English.
I need help, i have a western digital 1TB Simplesave HP hard drive and when i plug in the USB cable into my HP Touchsmart laptop it doesnt show up as a hard drive but instead it shows up as a CD Drive (G:) i cant get in the Drive and i have some things in there i need… Please help, anything i can do?
Solution 79 worked like a charm after hours of trouble shooting … geez, that was easy !
#
RapMan
December 25th, 2009 at 9:09 am
79
Just quick info. I don’t know why but I had also unknown device in Device manager. When I checked the properties, I found out that this unknown device is the drive volume.
So I updated driver and manually selected path to C:\Windows\Inf (Not online update), the driver was installed (Generic volume) and the drive started to work!
Do Western Digital (s) work on Windows 7?
THANK YOU to Cliff @ #156. I have spent 2.5 hours over the last two days trying almost everything in this thread, to no avail. Unbelievably, your simple “turn off the power to the external hard drive” idea worked. I’m actually pretty annoyed that it was that easy. But, my new Windows 7 laptop finally recognizes it and my files are safe and sound. It makes no sense to me why it worked, but it worked! Thanks!
————————-
“I think I have the answer, plug your cable in. If windows 7 shows the message unknown device don’t remove the usb. instead turn the switch on the back of the external hard drive off for a few seconds then back on. Windows 7 should then for some unknown reason find the correct drivers and your buffalo hard drive will now work. This worked on mine.”
Hi All,
I had the same problem, I changed the USB cable to a sort one (about 1 feet) and every thing is working now.
I was able to solve the MyBook drive letter assignment with wonderful free program Paragon Backup & Recovery 2010 Free Advanced
http://www.paragon-software.com/free/ (you have to register for download).
Right click the MyBook icon, and choose Assign Drive Letter option.
Shame to WD for abandoning old drives!
hello
I had the same solution..
so I install Service pack 1 for windows 7 and then all problems was solved.
thank you..
Well i tried for days to get my WD mybook drive to work with windows 7 to no success, until today when i found a double usb cable that came with a Chinese imported 2.5″ external drive. Plugged it in and works like a charm. god damn you wdd
Has anyone ever got this drive to work in the ESATA mode in WIn 7
I am using Win 7 64 bit, with Mini WD passport. The problem is the power supplied by the laptop is not sufficient for this type of HDD.
Resolution- Call WD support, they will ship the correct usb cable for free. Hope this helps!
Windows 7 did not recognize my western digital 1.5 TB usb hard drive, although the light on the hard drive blinked a couple of times. I put my usb connector in another usb port a it worked.
#137, thanks, that worked great. I just needed to assign the letter.
I need help! I’ve tried posting on the HP boards but got no response.
I’ve had my HP Simplesave for about a year now – it has alot of video & Music files on it that I don’t have backed up anywhere else, so I can’t lose it all.
It worked fine until a few weeks ago when it stopped launching. I checked my computer & it only shows as one drive when it used to show as two. One now shows as the I:/ and unallocated. How can I fix this without losing everything on the drive?
I have windows XP.
Please help!
run in safe mode then make a transfer to the computer then run in normal mode…should work for them
Missing Drive solution courtesy of simerly.d(at)gmail.com
Type in start menu, “disk management”. Your missing drive should be in the lower panel.Note the disk number. Right click on your missing disk and select “Convert to dynamic disk”.
Now type in start menu “cmd”,(do not hit enter). Right click, then choose “open as administrator”. You should see “c:\Windows\system32″.(If not, go back to the open as administrator part).
Type “diskpart”. You will see “DISKPART>” Type “list disk”. Hopefully you will see your missing disk listed here.
Next, type “select disk x” x=your missing disk number. In my case, the missing drive was disk 1, so I typed “select disk 1″. It then said “Disk 1 is now the selected disk” “DISKPART>” Now type “create volume simple”. It replies, “DiskPart successfully created the volume.”
Now go back to the “disk management” window. Your missing disk should be in the upper pane, but without a letter assignment. Simply right click on the disk and select “change
drive letter and paths…” I just went with the default,”e”.
Format the drive. All of a sudden I have my drive back!
Special thanks to ” simerly.d(at)gmail.com ” for his solution to the problem. If it helps you, send him money and thanks! (I owe him dinner).
I too am dealing with this issue (with my client’s brand new pc)
Dealing with this garbage, reading this never-ending thread, and still getting nowhere…
You know when you have a Macintosh you just plug it in and it just shows up.
Right there.
It’s like magic.
No problem.
No mystery.
No “I have every driver except the one I need”.
No updating to build 7057.
No device managers.
No updating intel matrix managers.
No running stupid 3rd party scan and fix (ha!) programs that scan but don’t fix.
There is no law that says you have to buy all this planned and built-in frustration.
When I see the ease and forethought that went into Macintosh I realize that all the hassles of the PC are intentional. Really. They had to go out of their way to make it this hard and counter-intuitive. To add all this complexity and user-unfriendliness required effort, a lot of it.
That the idea that the new Windows 7 (the brand new thing they spent millions on developing) can’t see Western Digital (a company that’s been here for a long time) when the other older systems apparently can seems to be a joke that the super duper giant company enjoys playing.
(Did you not remember that WD is a popular company? Did you not try plugging one in before you went to mass production? Or did you simply ignore all of your co-workers who did? How many people were actually involved in making this incompatibility a reality? Did people get raises for this?)
I have been a Mac since 1984. That’s 27 years! Never have I seen even a small reason to consider a PC. It is simply inferior. Which really means Inferior, Worse, Crappier, Not as good, Less, Undesirable, Poor, The Wrong Choice…
These horrible companies should be forced by the marketplace (that’s You, people) to make a quality product that compares and meets a standard or be deprived of your business. (It’s your money.)
Let me put this in real terms. It’s Friday afternoon. I was going to be productive all weekend for a Monday delivery. That’s tonight, tomorrow and the next day. I’m screwed until Monday… well, my client is. You see, I told him to get a Mac. And now it’s THREE WHOLE DAYS wasted. Then he has to buy a new external drive that his computer can see. Then he has to transfer all the footage and files. Over 700 Gigs! So I guess we’re really FOUR to FIVE DAYS screwed. But I’m booked next week and into the next… so…
I typed in usb flash drive errors in the search engine and found this site to be the best at answering peoples questions.
What occured? I don’t want to lose any of my files for I have a lot of family pictures and important documents. Someone PLEASE HELP!
I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop w/ Windows 7. I was organizing my Usb Flash drive a little while ago, creating new folders moving files etc and it was working PERFECTLY FINE. But NOW, its not reading my USB Flash drive at all. Nothing changed from the time I was organizing. I plugged in other USB FLash drives and they seem to work Just fine. What might have happened? I also plugged in the USB Flash on my Desktop and it’s not reading it either
P.S- I’m not the most PC savvy person so please explain it to me like i’m a child. I cant understand how it can go from working fine to not appearing or reading the usb flash drive at all
Drive- USB3 my book essential 2TB
OS- Windows 7
Problem – The Fuking POS worked so i copied all my stuff over to it now neither computer will recognise it just says installing device driver software blah blah so off it…. You can hear it spin for a bit then stops, after a few min of trying to install new driver software (who knows why it should already be there!!!) it doesnt work FFS!
Went to my device manager, uninstalled drivers for external drive, plugged it in again and it worked
i have this fujitsu calmee xena (portable hard drive) and got a lot of importanat files inside it and i got this problem,when i attach the usb cable i got an error saying usb not recognized. I tried a lot of things just to retrieve the files but failed,can someone here help me about this problem.I wuold really do appreciate any help i can get,tnx….
Hi.
having the same problem.
Just bought an ASUS all-in-one EeeTop PC ET2010PNT running win7 64bit.
This “thing” does not recognize ANY usb mass storage device (external HD, pendrive, etc).
Will try tomorrow the suggestions #144 onwards…
any help would be appreciated.. thnx in advance
#171 worked for me!!!!Paragon displayed WD drive with no letter. Windows Disk Management did not show drive at all. All other solutions included booting rebooting, deleting drivers, unplugging etc. did not work.
I am running Windows 7 and it did not recognized my WD My Book Essential. Once I formatted the drive and assigned it a drive letter it worked.
i’m facing the same problem as well..n i’ve tried everything that was written here..but none of dem works..it doesn’t show up on device management, not on the usb tree or anything…i even tried it on my dad’s netbook n its still the same..but the thing is..it only started today..up til yesterday everything is okay until today…i’m using wd passport essential 1 tera dat i bought last month..
Same problem as Ayu. 500 WD worked fine until today when its just not showing up on window 7.
hi i got a asus laptop, it can not detect transcend portable hard drive.
what can be the problem
I had the same problem, with a number of external (both USB and esata) drives. As a photographer, I have a TON of disk, and use external drives as my archive/backup. I was devastated when I found out some of my drives were no longer recognized when I plugged them in my new system. Then they weren’t recognized when I plugged them in my old system. I searched high and low for a solution, and tried the MS ‘fixes’ as well as other suggestions (removing drivers/reloading drivers/…) Nothing resolved the issue, and I really didn’t want to format multiple disks, and start using them again. Once a disk goes bad – I’ll destroy it rather then use it again (your data is important – right?)
I found a solution that saved my disks! I don’t think there was anything ‘wrong’ with my disks, but I saw one post about EASEUS and Partition Master – I figured what the hell at most I lose $50 (they seem to have 30 day return policy as well) – at best I get one or more of my ‘unformatted’ drives back.
IT WORKED!!!
I got each of my drives back up and working! BEST $50 I’ve ever spent!!! I don’t normally rave about software, but this one saved my images and my drives! There might be other products out that do the same thing – but this is the one I found and the one I will turn to if this happens again!
Chris
Solution!!!
try gently wobbleing with USB port in disk´s slot
Hi, I have installed Win 7 64 bit, and when I tried to plug my WD Passport 500 GB USB 3.0 is not wanted him to be recognized in Windows Explorer, I had installed Magic ISO virtual, after I did uninstall storage conntrollers-MagicISO SCIS Host Controller , now everything is ok, and then I re-installed MagicISO virtual and everything works. I hope I helped you, Regards from Bosnia
Hi I had similar problem with ‘Windows 7′.
WD 2tB drive suddenly after 1 yr working was not picked up in windows explorer however it was still recognised as a devise. It was recognised as normal on my PS3 and Ubuntu machine.
Eventually I uninstalled the driver and reinstalled.
Now it works. 2 hours of my life lost but… I can move on!
Hi, do anybody has or maybe can share “WD External HDD Button & Lights” software. Without this soft. unable to connect through Firewire and i find it nowhere.Thanks
Hey All,
Having a very weird thing happen. My WD External Hard drive that has all of my old data on it shows on my new Windows 7 1 Terra byte computer but when I open it it shows as empty Yet when I open its properties it shows as most of the way full. Would just reformat except that has all the family photo’s and important documents on it. Any ideas of how to make its content show and be usable. Thanks in advance for any tips.
~confused computer user.
I had the same problem just now and I tried first to use other USB ports on my computer, and then I chanced the USB cable. That seemed to do it.
For anyone with the possibility, try this trick.
I have put this cable away and marked it as ‘problematic’!
Hi quys,
right click external disk
left click properties
left click tab security
Check the objects with rights
if you have one or more objects with a string with digits en letters “unknown obect”. remove this one.
left click button Edit
add your userid
and be happy
Regards Frank
This is a windows 7 problem and its a bad one.
First its easy to get your drives to mount by uninstalling and using plug and play to remount. That said, try to send a large file to the Win 7 HDD from a USB hdd or firewire hdd and it won’t complete the task and if you do it long enough it will erase the the win 7 OS on your hard drive.
One interesting surprise is that usb thumb drives work like a dream. They mount and they exchange data without difficulty. I haven’t tested to see if the drive size is the limiting factor here but I will. I have lots of small drives around and will see if they respond better.
I have an acer Ferrari 4005 laptop running win 7 64 bit and it too has the same issues except no fatal hard drive crashes. Sharing files is not an issue but it won’t take big files from 3 to 5 GB.
This reminds me of the old behavior of Microsoft. They know this bug exists and they are trying to foil hackers. So if you want a temporary fix to this idiocy, just get yourself a big fat thumb drive and you can move whatever hacked software you want to send or take off your Win 7 drive.
I tested with multiple thumb drives and transferred 3 GB files without difficulty. All operate with autoplay and you don’t have to load new drivers. Also I never let win 7 scan to fix my thumbs. If they work in XP and win 2000 professional, they don’t need fixin.
There is NO fix from any of the above posts. Different builds might work but not from the jokers on this board. There is some slight improved stability with some hardware but the external drive in win 7 don’t work properly.
I am going to make up an external drive and format it in Win 7 and see if that helps but I doubt it. This is undoubtedly a software error and microsoft knows about it and sent the product out the door defective.
They will come out with a patch eventually or a service pack. They may even toss you the update.
And by the way 99% of the advice on this board is krap. This is a classic software bug common to all the versions I have tested. I only test the 64 bit versions but I am a purist and I wouldn’t run this os in a 32 bit machine since XP is both stable and faster in some metrics than windows 7.
If something breaks I will keep you posted.
Lordrobot at your service