Help, is external hard drive dead?

hethmar

After a lot of faffing about and asking advice I bought a WD passport essential external hd a couple of months ago.

Today I did a lot of quotes so I thought Id better update/back up the hard drive.

Ive plugged it in as usual but where I have two columns on the screen, one being my puter files and the other showing me whats on the WD PASSPORT, nothing is shown on the wd column. In it is the message No writable WD smartware partition found.

I am a complete puter dummy - does this mean its failed please?

googler

Can you try it with another computer, or in a different USB port in the existing?

mumslave

I was having this exact problem until just now.

I read the help file which suggested that I reformat the drive. I opened the "computer management" and went to the "disk management" section.

The drive was there, but had no drive letter and was not "active."

So, I assigned a drive letter and made the drive active and everything worked.

I'm using Windows 7.

Found that for you, i had a similar thing but with a different external hd, same thing though, it had no drive letter assigned to it.

hethmar

I dont really follow that Im afraid. Im on VISTA could someone kindly talk me through in words of one syllable please?

Ive gone to the disk management thing (never knew it existed) and there is an entry on one side is CD Rom 9 CD-Rom 668 MB online and then in the next column it says WD Smartware (L : ) 668 MBUDF Healthy (Primary Partition)

mumslave

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windowsvista/ht/disk-management-vista.htm - instructions

hethmar

Many thanks mum, Ive got to the right bit but it has that L next to it. Is that what I need to change and if so, what do I change it to please?

Ive gone to the disk management thing (never knew it existed) and there is an entry on one side is CD Rom 9 CD-Rom 668 MB online and then in the next column it says WD Smartware (L : ) 668 MBUDF Healthy (Primary Partition)

mumslave

If it has the drive letter then I would think it would need to be reformatted, like this link says, but my problem went as far as there not being a letter so cant really help further sorry!

hethmar

Ive tried rebooting as someone on that forum suggests but now I get a message WDDM Service is not running??

hethmar

L drive though? I look at My computer and see that memory stick is allocated I drive? Should I try to change the L to an I?

hethmar

Update: Many thanks for your support. I did a lot more faffing and googling and ended up reformating it (gawd knows how but I did ) and Ive just rebooted and its reappeared :T

Ive backed up and it actually has more on the external drive now than the puter. Not sure why but better to have more than less

mumslave

Glad you got it sorted, sorry I couldnt be of more help