External Hard Drive doesnt show in Explorer.

bushwacker · May 10, 2013

Hi All,
I have a WD Elements 1tb External hard drive which I used with my linux sat receiver for recordings and stuff, It was formatted in ext 4 format.
I have now bought a new one which doesn't need to be powered (uses usb to power it). So I want to format the WD back to ntfs/fat32 so I can use with windows as a storage drive.
The problem is When I plugged it into my laptop I went to disk management deleted the partition made active and formatted into ntfs but it doesn't show in windows explorer.
Is there something else I should be doing or am I doing something totally wrong ? All I want to use it for now is storage of photos and videos stuff like that but useable by windows.

cheers

buzzer · May 10, 2013

press:

start> (right click) computer> manage > disk management

hopefully you will now be able to see the missing drive as unallocated.

should be able to format the drive from there...

bushwacker · May 10, 2013

hi,
thanks for reply.
did that and did a quick format but still not showing as a useable drive

/
just doing a non quick format but its taking absolutely ages, been on about an hour and half and only on 15%...... wonder wether the drive has a fault.

danforth · May 10, 2013

bushwacker said:
hi,
thanks for reply.
did that and did a quick format but still not showing as a useable drive /
just doing a non quick format but its taking absolutely ages, been on about an hour and half and only on 15%...... wonder wether the drive has a fault.

Fast for full format with that drive capacity, don't worry yet.

buzzer · May 10, 2013

is ity showing as "unallocated" space?

create a new partition on the drive , should then give it a drive letter and show as useable.

bushwacker · May 11, 2013

In Computer management it shows the drive as "Disk 1 - Basic - 931.51GB - online". Then in the window Where it shows if there are any portions it says "WD (the name of the drive) 931.51 NTFS Healthy (Primary Partition)".
But still I am unable to see it in explorer and put files on it.

9i8u · May 21, 2013

if you right click the partition, can you assign a drive letter to it? sometimes that is all it needs

bushwacker · May 22, 2013

9i8u said:
if you right click the partition, can you assign a drive letter to it? sometimes that is all it needs

Absolutely spot on..... cant believe I didn't assign a drive letter. That sorted it straight away. Thank you very much.

danforth · May 22, 2013

buzzer said:
is ity showing as "unallocated" space?

create a new partition on the drive , should then give it a drive letter and show as useable.

Well, it was suggested 12 days ago.

bushwacker · May 23, 2013

danforth said:
Well, it was suggested 12 days ago.

yep thanx for that

iEKOS · Jun 18, 2013

bushwacker said:
Absolutely spot on..... cant believe I didn't assign a drive letter. That sorted it straight away. Thank you very much.

Its Windows that didnt assign is. It should be automated. Once Win has cycled through allot of letters, it bugs out. Quite common.

External Hard Drive doesnt show in Explorer.

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