WD My Book Essential 2.0

Forcheli1

Just bought a second hand one of these and my laptop won't recognise the drive. As far as I am aware the drive has been wiped and formatted using NTFS. I've tried to download the software from WD website and I get a failure there - unable to launch setup.exe......help please

JasX

There is no 'software' to install for hard disks they're all standard.

Can you see it to reformat?

If not find your my computer icon, right click on it and select 'manage' then select the 'disk management' tree from the right hand pane, see if your new drive shows up there at all? if so you might just need to manually assign it a drive letter (right click something) and reformat.

If not it might be dead but worth trying with another computer or two to be certain (ideally on a different OS/version of windows)

Last resorts would be downloading diagnostic tools from western digital and seeing if they can tell you what the problem is, and finally tear the outer case apart and see if the drive inside is any good and use it as an internal drive. (or get your money back if possible)

Forcheli1

Thanks for the response

I can see the disk in Computer Management and it says Healthy (GPT Protective Partition) but can't do anything with it. My computer does not pick it up and assign a drive letter to it. It seems healthy and will refresh, I can hear it kick into action and it's empty. Right clicking anywhere does not let me assign a drive letter to it

JasX

Forcheli1 wrote: »

Thanks for the response

I can see the disk in Computer Management and it says Healthy (GPT Protective Partition) but can't do anything with it. My computer does not pick it up and assign a drive letter to it. It seems healthy and will refresh, I can hear it kick into action and it's empty. Right clicking anywhere does not let me assign a drive letter to it

well that's alot more promising for it actually working, if you let us know what OS you're on it'll probably be possible to find the specific steps and get it working

Forcheli1

I'm running Windows XP on a Lenovo netbook

El_Dude

The best thing I would suggest is it get some partitioning software, delete the disk and make a new partition and it should show up.

partitionwizard.com/free-partition-manager.html

weegie.geek

Disk Management will partition it for you. I'd delete all partitions, create one or more new NTFS partition and assign it/them letter(s), format it/them and it should be fine.

Forcheli1

Partition wizard won't work with it all the options are greyed out with the exception of the wizard (Copy partition/copy disk/partition recovery)

Disk Management won't do anything with it

weegie.geek

What does it say when you try/what options does it give when you try?

You're logged on with an account with administrative privileges, right?

Forcheli1

I'm just logged on as normal, I don't know how to log on with admin rights.
When I right click on the disc icon all the options are greyed out. Is that because I'm not using admin rights do you think? Sorry if I sound a bit thick but I'm new to this tech stuff

I just discovered that my normal logon is admin - so yes I do have admin rights

weegie.geek

Odd, could you take a screenshot of what disk management looks like please?