You are my freaking hero. Had an internal ssd inside an external enclosure and my laptop wouldn't assign it to a drive. Not tech savvy myself but "new simple volume" did everything I needed.
Thank you SO much!!! I had precious pictures of my pup who recently passed away in my old computer and could not get the external HD to format the traditional way. I was getting scared I wouldn't be able to transfer these pictures. I ran into your video and it WORKED!! I can't begin to express how grateful I am.
@@livingmonster1156 no sorry i just leave my external hard drive because i know its already old and maybe its already broken because i drop it few times before, just gonna buy new one soon
@@Victor_Victory Same with me Delete Volume and Help as the option left and everything is grayed out. Can somebody tell me what to do next? Or how to enable those other options?
Thank you! I've managed to get my external drive (wd hard disk) recognized! Oh, what a happiness after trying it with no success myself without any help…
I was at my wits end trying to get my pc to recognize my new external drive and you managed to sort if for me in a matter of seconds. Youre a hero my friend. You have earnt yourself a subscriber!
Life Saver, i have a 2 TB Toshiba external disk drive with all my music,pictures and data stored on it,my laptop would not recognize it,i went into disc management and i gave it a new drive letter and i am one happy camper thanks to this video,thanks so much.
Thank you for placing the information on you tube. I followed your instructions and it worked perfectly. I'm not that computer savvy so everyone should have no problem doing it.
Thank you! That was one of the most helpful videos I have found on RUclips best automechanic repair videos. LOL The most helpful video I found for reformatting my external hard drive.
If your portable HDD suddenly shows up as RAW in disk management. Try running a check disk on the drive to repair it. open the command prompt and tyle "chkdsk /f : "
"If you don't have files saved on this external hard disk, go on and initialize it in MBR or GPT partition." This seemed like a very important step you did not discuss. I mean, no, you don't lose date in the initization, but then you have to format it for it to work, in which case you do lose data? I don't want to lose data, that's why I'm trying to view the disk?
After going through the whole video and trying everything exactly according to your procedure...nothing worked, BUT I learned enough from this video to be able to go back and figure it out through a slightly different procedure and WALA! Thanks for the clear help that's hard to find these days.
After hours of frustration, I had to assign a drive letter. My seagate external worked for years, I was freaking out. I don't know why it happened but this fixed it, THANK YOU!
You are the best!!! This was so simple, after trying to follow instructions on websites which all want to sell you something to do what you showed me and fixed in 10 seconds. THANK YOU!
Thank you very much, I was trying to access my external hard drive for days, your guidelines were what I needed. I am now able to use my device. Thank you one more time. I subscribed to your channel as a thank you.
ThanksSSS A Million!!!. I've been having a hard time trying to format my Toshia Canvia on my windows pc. This worked great. Now i can save my longer Xbox One videos to my external hard drive.
So I just want to say that every clue you gave in the video is brilliant, but unfortunately none helped fixed my problem which led me here. My external drive was healthy so I had to figure out another way to fix the fluctuation. I simply had to restart the computer. So I just want to mention that, sometimes the solution to the problem could be a simple restart.
1. I uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled (failed) 2. I go to disk management it takes eons for it to display and when it does my drive is not visible 3. I checked my device properties, it says "this device is working properly" 4. I checked the volumes tab, its all blank. 5. Ive updated and reinstalled my driver multiple times and nothing works. 6. Oh and i didn't forget to restart (didn't work) *pls help I have a 232GB drive on my hands* 😢
Perfect. I tried to backup my old computer and my WD Hard Drive no longer had it's software on it. Doing the right click on the bottom worked. Sadly I lost everything, but pretty sure that was going to happen anyway.
This only partially solved the problem I had with my external hard drive, so I had to find an alternative solution. I used my WD Elements external hard drive for recording TV program via my cable TV receiver. The disk had to be formatted by the receiver in order to be used for that purpose, which, normally, uses different file system than Windows. Using the instructions described above, I was able to reformat the drive using Disk Management (everything was fine with the driver). And I had to change (assign) a drive letter to the disk manually, because it didn't happen automatically. Only then was the disk visible in Windows Explorer, and that in it's full capacity. However, every time when I would disconnect the drive from the computer and reconnect it, it wouldn't be visible in Windows Explorer, so I had to assign a drive letter to the disk over again in Disk Management for it to be usable on the computer. In addition to that, the disc was absolutely unusable on my other, older computer (which uses Windows XP), because the process of formatting and assigning a drive letter wasn't possible at all with it's Disk Management. (And I do need the drive for both my computers.) In order to solve this I found online and downloaded a specialized software for formatting my brand of external hard drive (WD Elements). After formatting the drive with this program, the disk started working properly. After it was connected, it was automatically recognized, assigned a drive letter and usable on both of my computers. I found myself in a similar situation about a year ago with my Silicon Power USB Flash Drive and managed to recover it for Windows use with their USB flash drive recovery software. So, if someone finds themselves in a similar situation, try googling for the specialized software for your device (" 'device brand' formatting software or 'device brand' recovery tool etc.) Download this software from the manufacturer's web sites and avoid these programs from the third party web sites if possible, as you are in the risk of getting infected with a malware that way. (For WD Elements external hard drives the link is: support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=3868 )
Clear, concise, and informative! WTFreindly Thank You. I did all your instructions which are great, I see my drive but it will not let me change the drive letter, any suggestions?
Omg, you SAVED MY SANITY just now! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was literally about to return my WD 1TB SSD interntal drive (but have an enclosure so using it as an external) because my laptop was not recognizing it. Your recommendation to go to run> diskmgmt.msc saved me. I did not know that it would show up as "unallocated" to my PC. Then clicked on "new simple volume" and ran the wizard and after formatting it works like a charm! Great work and thank you again for your help!
I have seen this problem a 100 times...one thing you forgot when saying hard drive dead if these fixes don't work...(The USB cable?) A faulty or wrong USB cable may work fine on one pc but not another.meaning your hard drive will spin up show up in disk management but not in show up in computer detected properties.It can simulate a bad device......The solution? change the cable or make sure your using the cable that usb hard drive came with....Cheers Jackdaw
Windows 7 has a problem in the Disk Management program recognising external HDDs or SSDs connected via USB. I have tried everything in this video and nothing works. Disk Management just does not load up .. just sits there unable to populate. The moment you remove the HDD or SSD connected via USB, Disk Management works like a charm. The drives work well via USB no problem there, but if you want to re partition etc, you cannot access these drives via DM. Beats me .. I use Windows 7 Pro and really have wasted heaps of time on this!
Thank you so much! I was going through Google & so many forums on to just trying to get the original size of my External Hard Drive back but so many of them told me to download a 3rd Party Program & I got no where. The first two minutes of the video fixed my issue & I want to say thank you!
Not sure what's going on. My Toshiba Ext HDD works on my Win 7 Desktop but not on my Win 10 Toshiba Laptop. When I plug in another ext HDD (NTFS also), it picks that one on the laptop. I guess I have to continue troubleshooting. Nonetheless, thanks for the tips here, even though it didn't solve my issue.
.I have a fairly new WD Passport 2 TB. It suggested that I run a repair on the device and when I finished a repair it now loops over and over and runs a single beep code while running and constantly runs. There are no clicks so I know the drive is fine concerning the hardware. However, it will not show up in my computer or the disk management so I can't change the drive letter. However, it hows up the notification area to eject the device so I know it's showing up somewhere on the machine.
When I right click (on windows 10) it the only option that appears is to delete the volume.. help i'm scared to lose the stuff that is already on the Hard Drive (that was from a mac btw)
LEGEND the second method worked thank you i brought a internal ssd and a adapter i thought it was one of those that was causing the problem nope just needed a format thank you so much :)
Thank you so much for this video! I've tried everything that i could and nothing worked. So glad I stumbled on your video, my drive is mounted again and working normal now.
OK I did what you suggested and the items that appeared were the C and E drives and one that read system reserve, which I am assuming is the additional 500 Gb drive that I recently added so I labeled that drive: F So I think everything is Okay,?
Can someone Pls help me I see my drive in disk manager but it says not initialized and when I try to it says device is not ready can anybody help me please
Hi - My USB drive is not showing up on win 10 / This PC - Also not showing up under Disk Management. But is showing up under - Control Panel\System and Security\Storage space - Green Tick OK - Attached via USB 1.88 % used providing 465 GB pool capacity - Can you help
Omg i ve been looking to solve this for weeks!!! as soon as i assigned the letter it started working, dont understand the logic behind this but im soooo grateful, thank you so much!!! :D
Unplugged expander and went direct.....it worked, so simple, but I needed your video to realize it, THANK YOU!
You are my freaking hero. Had an internal ssd inside an external enclosure and my laptop wouldn't assign it to a drive. Not tech savvy myself but "new simple volume" did everything I needed.
THAN YOU!! I just bought an external storage enclosure, and started to panic when windows didn't detect it. You are my savior.
Thank you SO much!!! I had precious pictures of my pup who recently passed away in my old computer and could not get the external HD to format the traditional way. I was getting scared I wouldn't be able to transfer these pictures. I ran into your video and it WORKED!! I can't begin to express how grateful I am.
Thank you. So refreshing to have an adult give you instructions instead of a techno track and blinking lights!!!!
I've watched a dozen videos trying to figure this out. But following your steps worked great!! Thank you very much for this!!
Yep, same here
There's loads of vids with guys padding out the time and not actually addressing the problem
Same Here, Thanks for this!
How about when you right click on it every option is disable except for the properties and help
Having same problem did U get it solved please many thanks
Hello, I have the same problem with you. Have you fixed it already? Please help me.
@@livingmonster1156 no sorry i just leave my external hard drive because i know its already old and maybe its already broken because i drop it few times before, just gonna buy new one soon
@@1jrma3 Oh. Okay, thank you.
@@Victor_Victory Same with me Delete Volume and Help as the option left and everything is grayed out. Can somebody tell me what to do next? Or how to enable those other options?
Im not seeing my usb on disk management... :( 😔
@@iKingOf Same here does not show any other Drive other than my C: Drive for Windows... trying to access my Maxtor external HD with data on it!
same here and im using seagate barracuda .....wasted money
Same issue here, I can't see my WD Elements anywhere
You can fix it
henrich tan did u find a solution? I have a seagate 2tb and it won’t show up I’m hoping I didn’t waste $60 :(
Thank you! I've managed to get my external drive (wd hard disk) recognized! Oh, what a happiness after trying it with no success myself without any help…
the same hard drive issue and easy fix!
Thought it was the usb drivers were the problem but just changing the Drive number was all that was needed. Thank You...
I was at my wits end trying to get my pc to recognize my new external drive and you managed to sort if for me in a matter of seconds. Youre a hero my friend. You have earnt yourself a subscriber!
Life Saver, i have a 2 TB Toshiba external disk drive with all my music,pictures and data stored on it,my laptop would not recognize it,i went into disc management and i gave it a new drive letter and i am one happy camper thanks to this video,thanks so much.
Thank you for placing the information on you tube. I followed your instructions and it worked perfectly. I'm not that computer savvy so everyone should have no problem doing it.
Thank you! That was one of the most helpful videos I have found on RUclips best automechanic repair videos. LOL The most helpful video I found for reformatting my external hard drive.
If your portable HDD suddenly shows up as RAW in disk management. Try running a check disk on the drive to repair it. open the command prompt and tyle "chkdsk /f : "
I searched way too long for this, but thank you!
"If you don't have files saved on this external hard disk, go on and initialize it in MBR or GPT partition." This seemed like a very important step you did not discuss. I mean, no, you don't lose date in the initization, but then you have to format it for it to work, in which case you do lose data? I don't want to lose data, that's why I'm trying to view the disk?
i appreciate it, finally you could help, because shitty windows CS, only says troubleshoot and nothing happens; Youre a life saver, thank you!!!
I was so frustrated when my pc wouldn't show my hdd bt the the first step on the video did the trick, THANKS A MILLION
When I plug in my Drive it makes a noise when I plug it in but it doesn't show it on the drive list
Same here
So much more helpful then any written tutorial, got it running half way thru your video ;]
Haha same :)
thank you for being easy to listen to and straight to the point.
Thank you sooo much yours was the only video after I watched 6 of them that actually made since and worked perfectly! Your great!!!
It made since? Sense when? MORON, larn houwe tu spel.
Don't be mean!
After going through the whole video and trying everything exactly according to your procedure...nothing worked, BUT I learned enough from this video to be able to go back and figure it out through a slightly different procedure and WALA! Thanks for the clear help that's hard to find these days.
voila*******************
What is that slightly different procedure?
I need it.
Thanks so much for the easy to understand and straight forward help. Had a SDD in an enclosure that was recognized but not showing up on Win 7.
Thank you - Been having issues with a new DAS device I had for Xmas - This tutorial fixed it. Much appreciated :-)
After hours of frustration, I had to assign a drive letter. My seagate external worked for years, I was freaking out. I don't know why it happened but this fixed it, THANK YOU!
I went to disk management and changed the unit's letter, boom! it works!
You are the best!!! This was so simple, after trying to follow instructions on websites which all want to sell you something to do what you showed me and fixed in 10 seconds. THANK YOU!
SUPER helpful this was causing me so much pain looking for an explaination. thanks!
Thank you very much, I was trying to access my external hard drive for days, your guidelines were what I needed. I am now able to use my device. Thank you one more time.
I subscribed to your channel as a thank you.
Vicente Monteiro did your data get erased?
Thanks, the only clear and precise video to get access to my thumb drive .... On RUclips..
ThanksSSS A Million!!!. I've been having a hard time trying to format my Toshia Canvia on my windows pc. This worked great. Now i can save my longer Xbox One videos to my external hard drive.
Thank you Sir. Your guidance saved my day!
This was so helpful! Great video that explains the process step-by-step! Thank you sir!
Clear and simple instructions. Thank you so much 😊
great advice - really helped me sort out my problem - thanks a lot!
THAAAANK YOU so muuch, I've been looking for a solution for months :')
So I just want to say that every clue you gave in the video is brilliant, but unfortunately none helped fixed my problem which led me here.
My external drive was healthy so I had to figure out another way to fix the fluctuation. I simply had to restart the computer. So I just want to mention that, sometimes the solution to the problem could be a simple restart.
Hi
Are u willing to help me?
1. I uninstalled the drivers and reinstalled (failed)
2. I go to disk management it takes eons for it to display and when it does my drive is not visible
3. I checked my device properties, it says "this device is working properly"
4. I checked the volumes tab, its all blank.
5. Ive updated and reinstalled my driver multiple times and nothing works.
6. Oh and i didn't forget to restart (didn't work) *pls help I have a 232GB drive on my hands* 😢
@@ocean8621 hi, you could try using the command prompt
Perfect. I tried to backup my old computer and my WD Hard Drive no longer had it's software on it. Doing the right click on the bottom worked. Sadly I lost everything, but pretty sure that was going to happen anyway.
It requires a format sadly I figured that out the hard way just now
my problem is the external drive couldn't even initialized, I can't manually arrange paths & other things. How do I fix this??
This only partially solved the problem I had with my external hard drive, so I had to find an alternative solution.
I used my WD Elements external hard drive for recording TV program via my cable TV receiver. The disk had to be formatted by the receiver in order to be used for that purpose, which, normally, uses different file system than Windows.
Using the instructions described above, I was able to reformat the drive using Disk Management (everything was fine with the driver). And I had to change (assign) a drive letter to the disk manually, because it didn't happen automatically. Only then was the disk visible in Windows Explorer, and that in it's full capacity. However, every time when I would disconnect the drive from the computer and reconnect it, it wouldn't be visible in Windows Explorer, so I had to assign a drive letter to the disk over again in Disk Management for it to be usable on the computer. In addition to that, the disc was absolutely unusable on my other, older computer (which uses Windows XP), because the process of formatting and assigning a drive letter wasn't possible at all with it's Disk Management. (And I do need the drive for both my computers.)
In order to solve this I found online and downloaded a specialized software for formatting my brand of external hard drive (WD Elements). After formatting the drive with this program, the disk started working properly. After it was connected, it was automatically recognized, assigned a drive letter and usable on both of my computers. I found myself in a similar situation about a year ago with my Silicon Power USB Flash Drive and managed to recover it for Windows use with their USB flash drive recovery software.
So, if someone finds themselves in a similar situation, try googling for the specialized software for your device (" 'device brand' formatting software or 'device brand' recovery tool etc.) Download this software from the manufacturer's web sites and avoid these programs from the third party web sites if possible, as you are in the risk of getting infected with a malware that way. (For WD Elements external hard drives the link is: support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=3868 )
Thanks for this. My problem was, external disk was in a LINUX partition, not Windows partition. Plugged it into a Linux laptop, and presto.
Clear, concise, and informative! WTFreindly Thank You. I did all your instructions which are great, I see my drive but it will not let me change the drive letter, any suggestions?
You are a lifesaver! Saver of storage lives!
my drive light power is on but it cant detected my drive and it not showing in drive mange
You should "detected" houwe to spel. MORON.
Thanks for the video! Managed to get Windows to find my external after I changed the Drive letter, much appreciated!
Thanks, buddy! Better than the actual help page from the company!
Thank You. I used your tip about going to disc management and assigning a letter.
You're a wizard Harry : )
Omg, you SAVED MY SANITY just now! Thank you, thank you, thank you. I was literally about to return my WD 1TB SSD interntal drive (but have an enclosure so using it as an external) because my laptop was not recognizing it. Your recommendation to go to run> diskmgmt.msc saved me. I did not know that it would show up as "unallocated" to my PC. Then clicked on "new simple volume" and ran the wizard and after formatting it works like a charm! Great work and thank you again for your help!
adding a letter to drive worked for me for all external drives!! thank you
PERFECT!!!! Just what I needed!!!! Thank you!
Thanks so much. Forgot about this as I had not had to use this in like decades.
I have seen this problem a 100 times...one thing you forgot when saying hard drive dead if these fixes don't work...(The USB cable?) A faulty or wrong USB cable may work fine on one pc but not another.meaning your hard drive will spin up show up in disk management but not in show up in computer detected properties.It can simulate a bad device......The solution? change the cable or make sure your using the cable that usb hard drive came with....Cheers Jackdaw
Windows 7 has a problem in the Disk Management program recognising external HDDs or SSDs connected via USB. I have tried everything in this video and nothing works. Disk Management just does not load up .. just sits there unable to populate. The moment you remove the HDD or SSD connected via USB, Disk Management works like a charm. The drives work well via USB no problem there, but if you want to re partition etc, you cannot access these drives via DM. Beats me .. I use Windows 7 Pro and really have wasted heaps of time on this!
been trying to download ark and get it working for hours. you solved my problem in 2 minutes THANK YOU
Thank you so much! I was going through Google & so many forums on to just trying to get the original size of my External Hard Drive back but so many of them told me to download a 3rd Party Program & I got no where. The first two minutes of the video fixed my issue & I want to say thank you!
thumbs up and big thank you. It worked for me just as shown in tutorial.
Super helpful, thank you!
serious.. thank you! this has bothered me for atleast 2 years!!
Not sure what's going on. My Toshiba Ext HDD works on my Win 7 Desktop but not on my Win 10 Toshiba Laptop. When I plug in another ext HDD (NTFS also), it picks that one on the laptop. I guess I have to continue troubleshooting. Nonetheless, thanks for the tips here, even though it didn't solve my issue.
OMG THANK YOU SO MUCH ( 1:44 ) I LOVE U MAN!!!!!!!!!!
Awesome video. It worked. Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.
Master!!!!! 1:50 Worked for me to solve my Lacie D2 Professional Not being Reconized
6 years old but this just ended a stressful situation for me 😂👏 thank you
Thank you very much for this informative tutorial to help me and many more.
This saved me from having to store all these zoom calls on my workstation.
.I have a fairly new WD Passport 2 TB. It suggested that I run a repair on the device and when I finished a repair it now loops over and over and runs a single beep code while running and constantly runs. There are no clicks so I know the drive is fine concerning the hardware. However, it will not show up in my computer or the disk management so I can't change the drive letter. However, it hows up the notification area to eject the device so I know it's showing up somewhere on the machine.
"change drive letter and paths" was the ticket for me
Thanks a million man!!!!Saved me from a trip to the pc doctor.Keep up the good work!
When I right click (on windows 10) it the only option that appears is to delete the volume.. help
i'm scared to lose the stuff that is already on the Hard Drive (that was from a mac btw)
have the same problem
this is it, no bullshit just direct to the point. Thanks!
Sorted out my new SATA drive with in 2 minutes of watching this. Wished I had seen this video days ago..... perfect thank you...
Very helpful and to the point. Thank you
Thanks! This really helped my external drive to work again on my laptop!
LEGEND the second method worked thank you i brought a internal ssd and a adapter i thought it was one of those that was causing the problem nope just needed a format thank you so much :)
Thank you for this video. This surely formatted my SP Armor perfectly
THANK YOU!!! I have just added 6 1TB hard drives to store pictures and videos!!
That fixed my new 8TB drive problem halfway into the video. Thanks!
I used my external for a boot recovery and couldn't figure out how to get it back to normal as it's the only one I have. Thanks for the video
Thanks! Was using a hub! Once I plugged directly in…boom! Back in business!
Dude this video solved a huge problem is was having THANKS BUNCH
Thank you so much for this video! I've tried everything that i could and nothing worked. So glad I stumbled on your video, my drive is mounted again and working normal now.
Straight up. Thumbs up. Solved a problem when I had been using this drive previously to store game files with my Xbox.
THANK YOU. I just had to change the drive letter and it was instantly fixed.
Thank you verrry much.
Hard drive is working once again.
This video saved me money :-)
Thank you. Finally i can access my old hard disk.
very in-depth. Thank you!
great VID!!! finally a short and simple video that fix the issue. THANKS!!!!
1 million percent an ACE sir! Been plugging drives up & watching videos....yours got me to a solution. LIKE!
OK I did what you suggested and the items that appeared were the C and E drives and one that read system reserve, which I am assuming is the additional 500 Gb drive that I recently added so I labeled that drive: F
So I think everything is Okay,?
no, its gonna die and youl lose all that information...... jk youre fine lol
Thank You! Very Helpful.
Ben Stegner, Thank you so much for the article!! and Thanks MUO!
Thank you! You helped me get my external hard drive recognized.
Can someone Pls help me I see my drive in disk manager but it says not initialized and when I try to it says device is not ready can anybody help me please
Same Problem for me . . .
Just what I was looking for. Thanks!
Great video with clear language. Thanks very much!
Hi - My USB drive is not showing up on win 10 / This PC - Also not showing up under Disk Management. But is showing up under - Control Panel\System and Security\Storage space - Green Tick OK - Attached via USB 1.88 % used providing 465 GB pool capacity - Can you help
Omg i ve been looking to solve this for weeks!!! as soon as i assigned the letter it started working, dont understand the logic behind this but im soooo grateful, thank you so much!!! :D
did you loose all your files?