Vista lost drive letter on external WD drive?

[admin_exported]

Probably slightly off-topic here, but thought this forum was closest match to my problem.

I've been using a Western Digital Elements Portable 250Gb hard drive for back-ups from laptop. Overnight it stopped working and no external HD showing on My Computer. I'm using Vista. The HD is only a few months old and has been written to several times only for back-ups (not as diligent as I should be...!). The driver is apparently up to date (and WD seem to use inbuilt OS drivers for plug and play anyway), the hard drive shows as a physical drive under Device Manager and it says it's working properly, but under Disk Management it just doesn't appear as a drive at all. It was F drive previously but now definitely no F drive anywhere. I can't find a way to give it a new drive letter (don't mind losing data on it, as I can re-run the back-ups) because it doesn't appear under Disk Management and I can't initialize it.

How can it show under Device Manager but not at all under Disk Management?

It's driving me nuts [8o|] and I would really appreciate any help you might be able to offer. Thanks folks.

 

[Anonymous]

If it takes its power from the USB cable rather than external PSU it might not be getting enough power. One of those usb y-cables is needed to take power from 2 usb ports.

This sounds like exactly what ur problem is.

U dont mention what OS version u are running.

 

[simonlewis]

it has vista in the title i would imagine that would be his OS.

 

[michael hoy]

athenry:
Probably slightly off-topic here, but thought this forum was closest match to my problem.

I've been using a Western Digital Elements Portable 250Gb hard drive for back-ups from laptop. Overnight it stopped working and no external HD showing on My Computer. I'm using Vista. The HD is only a few months old and has been written to several times only for back-ups (not as diligent as I should be...!). The driver is apparently up to date (and WD seem to use inbuilt OS drivers for plug and play anyway), the hard drive shows as a physical drive under Device Manager and it says it's working properly, but under Disk Management it just doesn't appear as a drive at all. It was F drive previously but now definitely no F drive anywhere. I can't find a way to give it a new drive letter (don't mind losing data on it, as I can re-run the back-ups) because it doesn't appear under Disk Management and I can't initialize it.

How can it show under Device Manager but not at all under Disk Management?

It's driving me nuts

and I would really appreciate any help you might be able to offer. Thanks folks.

Have you added any other drives recently , memory sticks etc.

 

[Anonymous]

edsib1:If it takes its power from the USB cable rather than external PSU it might not be getting enough power. One of those usb y-cables is needed to take power from 2 usb ports.

SPOT ON !!!! I have a drawer full of USB 2.0 cables which all kind of look the same. But no ! I went through each in turn and lo and behold, one of them worked. There is a small LED on the WD portable HD which lit up when using the old USB cable so I thought that meant it was adequately powered, but using the new (ie. proper) cable, that light is much brighter (although it's not a Y cable). Happy days. Thanks to each of you for taking the time to respond.