Western Digital HDDs not showing up in a docking station while others do?

Question

I recently bought a Kingwin EZ-Dock Model EZD-2535U3 so that I could use some HDDs and SSDs I had laying around for back ups. At the same time I bought a brand new Western Digital WD NAS Red 4TB HDD.

The other drives that I had prior are a 128GB Samsung SSD, a 500GB Seagate Laptop HDD, and another 3TB Western Digital Green HDD.

My issue is that neither of the Western Digital drives will show up when in the dock. Both the Samsung and Seagate work show up and I have used them both to transfer data. I have tried multiple times to get them to show up and made sure they were seated correctly.

The only idea that I can gather, and it was just a "faint" random forum post (and I don't think this makes sense, but I can't convince myself either way) is that the Western Digitals think that they are "Master" drives and will not respond to puny slave requests to allow them to be read or written to.

Any idea what could be happening?

EDIT: Over the weekend I returned the Kingwin dock along with the 4TB Western Digital and bought a Nexstar Model CB-SATAU3-6 and a 1TB Western Digital Black HDD.

To keep it short, I am having the exact same issues. Both the Seagate and Samsung drives work with the new Nexstar and both of the 2TB and new 1TB Western Digitals will not show up in Windows.

I am not sure what the next steps should be now. I guess I could go buy another dock/USB-SATA device and try again or maybe the device is not the issue? I talked with the microcenter rep for a while and he said that he has used this specific Nexstar to hook up many types of drives (for what that's worth). So I might assume it is an issue with Western Digital or my current hardware setup..?

EDIT2: Here is what the device manager shows when a WD HDD is docked with the Nexstar. The C: and D: drives are my internal HDDs.

And here is what is shown when the 500 GB Seagate is docked

So it does look like the WD is recognized but it does not show up as a drive in windows explorer.

EDIT3: 1TB WD: I first plugged in the new 1TB WD drive and opened up the disk management tool. Upon opening the tool it told me that the disk space was unrecognized and needed to be formatted (I don't think that is the right term) to MBR or GPT, I chose GPT.

After I selected GPT the drive still showed as unallocated. I then chose to format it to NTFS and did not select a drive letter. It still did not show up in explorer. I then chose to "change drive letter and paths". Once I assigned it a drive letter it showed up in explorer.

I then undocked it and redocked it and it showed up just as if I plugged in a USB drive. So I have to assume I am all good now.

3TB WD: When I plugged in the 3TB WD I opened the disk management utility to find that it has 3 partitions (I am not sure what they are of). I then deleted each partition and formatted the entire drive, giving it a drive letter also. Once this was done it showed up in windows explorer. I undocked and redocked it, it then showed up as if I plugged in a USB device. So I have to assume it is also all good.

So in the end, I would have to assume I could have also done this with the Kingwin dock and I was just too inept in my decisions.

Solution 1

When a new disk fails to show up in Windows Explorer, there can be two reasons :

1. A missing disk driver

In some rare cases, the new disk requires a proprietary driver and cannot work with the one supplied by Windows.

To check, open up Device Manager and check whether the new disks are visible under the Disk drives branch or under Unknown devices.

In the first case, Windows has correctly identified the disk. In the second case, a proprietary driver needs to be installed from either a CD supplied with the disk or downloaded from the manufacturer's website.

Once the disk is correctly identified in the Device Manager, we continue to the second phase.

2. The disk was factory-formatted in an incompatible manner

Windows is pretty particular about the way the disk should be formatted. If an external disk is partitioned into multiple partitions, it risks to be unrecognized, or worse, only the first partition is recognized. A new disk should always be examined for such problems before being used.

Open Computer Management and click on Disk Management, then wait for the disk to show up.

If the disk is partitioned, right-click all partitions and choose Delete.

Once the entire disk is one unallocated space, right-click and choose New Simple Volume, then follow the wizard. Be careful to format all disks larger than 2 TB as GPT, since the other option, MBR, will not use more than the first 2.2 TB of the disk.

Once the disk is formatted and assigned a disk-letter, it is available as a normal disk.

For more information, see this How-To Geek article :
Understanding Hard Drive Partitioning with Disk Management.

Solution 2

Drives never show up in Windows Explorer. It would make no sense if they did.

Imagine, for example, if a drive with two partitions showed up in Windows Explorer and you double-clicked on it, which partition would it open? If you dragged a file to it, which partition would it go to?

Only mounted filesystems show in Windows Explorer. If a drive has no mounted filesystems, it does not, and should not, show up in Windows Explorer.

Comments

[Kinnectus]

Have you tried turning your computer off -> plugging the WD disk into the dock -> plug the dock into the USB port -> boot your computer?

[KDecker]

I want to say I have, I tried a few different ways, but I will again later today when I have a chance and comment on the results.

[Deltik]

It looks like your issue is similar to this one in that the proprietary way that the dock tries to handle storage devices is not compatible with some drive models.

[KDecker]

@Deltik That sounds like its the issue. I guess I possibly have to (sadly :)) take another trip to MicroCenter to find another dock.

[harrymc]

WD disks are not usable on every dock. I think you should either replace the disks or get a dock that is certified for WD.

[KDecker]

@harrymc Could you give me some more information? Is there a reason why, is this because of WD or because dock manufacturers won't step up to their "standards"? How can I tell if it is certified for WD?

[harrymc]

I don't know exactly why. Thinking about it, maybe this is because of the way the disk is factory-formatted. Are you offered the option to format the disk? Does Device Manager show it under Disk drives or as unknown device? Try one WD disk in a simple enclosure or as internal disk and see if it's recognized and as what.

[KDecker]

I have used the 2TB WD HDD as an internal drive for a few years before I bought a larger 4TB to replace it. The 2TB is just laying around now with random data that I wanted to remove and then use the space as backup space. So I know at least the one is recognizable when used internally. // The Nexstar in the edit is just about as simple as it gets, no fancy anything, no back up buttons, as simple as a dock can get (i think?). // IIRC, the HDDs didn't even show up in the device manager (I will report back today when I go on lunch).

[KDecker]

@harrymc If you view the second edit it looks like the WD does show up in the device manager as a WD HDD, though it is not shown as a drive in windows explorer.

[harrymc]

Next step is to check if it shows up in Computer Management / Disk Management. If it does, see if you can format it. Be careful to format the right disk! The big disk should be GPT (Windows should offer that).

[KDecker]

@harrymc If you would like to just summarize your comments above into a answer I will award you the bounty. You led me to a solution. Thank you.

[harrymc]

Done as requested.

[KDecker]

This makes sense. It also now makes sense that the brand new WD HDDs would not show up because they have no filesystem until they are formatted to be one. // Can only partition on a drive then be a mounted filesystem?

[David Schwartz]

@KDecker If a drive has only one partition, and on that partition is a mounted filesystem, then that filesystem will show up. However, the drive itself will still not show up.