Western Digital Elements hard drive not recognized

1. 63

   I am DB Cooperposted 13 years ago

   I just bought a Western Digital Elements 2TB external hard drive and I tried to hook it up to my laptop (which has Windows XP). I got the little yellow popup in the bottom of the screen indicating there was new hardware and then it seemed to do the quick install, which was basically what I get when plugging in a USB thumb drive, but then when I went to My Computer the drive wasn't listed there. I tried restarting, but still nothing. I tried different USB slots on my computer, and still nothing. Each one of these slots has been tested with other USB devices and does work.
   
   I've found a lot of people complaining about setting up these supposed "plug and play" Western Digital external hard drives, but so far none of the solutions have worked for me. One thing I haven't tried is using a different USB cable, as some people have said Western Digital ships some very poor USB cables with their hard drives.
   
   Formatting the drive isn't possible because I can't even get the computer to recognize that there's a drive there.
   
   Does anyone else have any other suggestions?

   replyreport
2. 60

   webtoysposted 13 years ago

   Please go to control panel, administrative tools, computer management....
   And then go to Disk Management....You can find your hard drives which are mounted on the computer, even your flash disk. Sometimes you can not see the C or D drive but It is there on disk management. All you have to do is mount again your hardrive by assigning new drive letter

   replyreport
   1. 63

      I am DB Cooperposted 13 years agoin reply to this

      Hmmm, I tried going into disk management and the only drive that showed up was my normal internal C drive.

      replyreport
3. 63

   I am DB Cooperposted 13 years ago

   The problem is fixed, but I'm still going to rant against Western Digital:
   
   I seem to have fixed the problem by using a USB extension cable and plugging the USB cable from the hard drive into that and then plugging the extension cable into my computer. This seems to be a common culprit with WD external drives, which makes me wonder if it's really worth it for them to be so cheap with their USB cables. How much can they possibly save by using a poorly-constructed cable that doesn't form a snug connection?
   
   From my experience buying bulk cables like this at work, I would guess they're saving $.10 to $.20 per cable at the most. How much is the bad PR costing them? People get a new hard drive and they can't get it to work and they write bad reviews online. More and more consumers are basing their purchases off online reviews, so this probably has a real impact on sales. It just doesn't make sense to me why they would think they can come out ahead by including a cheap cable that will cause their entire product to get a poor review. It would be like putting brakes from a Yugo on a new Ferrari. They're spending all sorts of money to cram more storage space into a hard drive and make them smaller and smaller, yet they want me to connect it to my computer using the cheapest possible version of the least technologically-advanced part of the product. What does it say about how little they care about quality when the one fault that prevents their product from working properly was fixed by a cable that came with a computer I purchased 14 years ago?

   replyreport
4. 87

   IzzyMposted 13 years ago

   If its any consolation, I've also got a WD external drive that is the same. My computer will recognise it each time I load it....eventually! Seem to spend ages taking wires out and back in again before it does though.

   replyreport