Windows – WD 2 TB External Hard Drive not Showing up in Computer

external hard drivewindows 7

I had the internal hard drive in my HPTouchSmart 600 (Windsows 7 64bit) replaced. When I got it home, I plugged in my WD 2 TB external hard drive. It worked fine. Within the next 24 hrs something happened. The drive no longer shows up in 'Computer'.

The Drive shows up in the Device Manager as:

  • WD My Book 1140 USB Device

In Device Properties on the Volumes Tab:

  • Disk: Disk1
  • Type: Unknown
  • Status: Not Initialized
  • Partition Style: Not Applicable
  • Capacity: 1907697 MB
  • Unallocated Space: 0 MB
  • Reserved Space: 0 MB

When I open the Disk Manager, I receive the following Pop-Up:

You must initialize a disk before Logical Disk Manager can access it.

Select Disks:

[] Disk 1

Use the following partition style for the selected disks:

   () MBR(Master Boot Record)

   () GPT (GUID Partition Table)

Note: The GPT partition style is not recognized by all previous versions of Windows....

[OK] [Cancel]

This disk contains several hundred movies which would take significant amount of time to re-burn. I tried the External drive on my laptop and it no longer shows up there either. Is my data gone?

Best Answer

Initializing a disk will indeed delete the data, so I would first recommend you not do that.

In order to recover the data, you would have to use a third party tool in order to recover it. It's possible that the master partition table on the drive was deleted somehow.

There are many tools out there that can recover data, personally I've used EaseUS Partition Manager and Wondershare Data Recovery, which have done the job for me in the past, though there is no guarantee.

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