My WD passport detected but not working

Question

After installing Windows 7 32-bit, my Western Digital Passport drive is being detected, but I cannot see a drive to open it.

I checked the drive on another system and it works, but not on mine.

What should I do?

Solution 1

Try this: right click on Computer from the start menu and click manage.

Go to Storage > Disk Management

If you can see the drive there Right click on it and click on Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Assign it any drive letter you want.

Solution 2

I have a Western Digital My Passport 1TB USB3 that is readable from a laptop, but would not appear as a drive on my PC that runs Windows 7 64bit. I fixed the problem by reinstalling the driver for the drive with the following steps:

1. Open control panel, view devices and printers, find the drive (mine is labeled "My Passport 0730").
2. Open properties of the drive, go to hardware tab, it will show 3 items in "device functions"
3. Open the properties of the item with type "disk drives", press "change settings"
4. Go to "driver" tab, press "uninstall" to uninstall the driver
5. Unplug the drive, plug it back
6. Windows will behave like the drive is plugged for the first time and install the driver for it

After those steps, I can read the drive normally.

Solution 3

If it is a newly bought one, you need to initialise it and format it, so that Windows 7 can see it.

Go to Storage > Disk Management:

Under your C drive, there will be a "New volume, uninitialised" - right click, initialise. Then it will change to "New volume, unallocated". Right click, allocate it a name and a drive letter, then format. It should be ready to use.

Solution 4

Open Disk Management and see if the drive is shown in there.

Maybe it is not initialised yet, or it is initialised but does not have a drive letter assigned to it.

There's a 90% chance your problem is caused by one of these 2 things.

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Comments

[Admin]

Did you install the WD software?

[Moab]

Shouldn't need software to see a usb device. Does it show in device manager? Disconnect any other usb storage devices before you plug it in.

[paulroho]

Did not work for me.

[paulroho]

Thank you for your effort, but it did not help.

[CitizenRon]

I like this method better than mine below. They both work for my similar troubles with my WD Passport, but this one is much easier to perform. Thanks Endy!

[user507410]

WARNING! Be careful! it will format the disk and you will permanently loose all data on the disk