SOLVED Cannot access external mass storage

[Joe Repetto]

I have a Dell Inspiron 3650 with windows 10. I have a WD Elements 1TB external storage. I previously backed up to that drive using true image. Now although the drive shows up in device manager, it doesn't show up on the computer or in disc management. I last used it in May 2017. I recently lost power for 4 days, I don't know if that had anything to do with it. I would appreciate any suggestions.

 

[Bighorn]

Electrical failures can cause issues with devices. Since you can see in in Device Management also look in Disk Management. If also there check if a drive letter has been assigned. If not could be the drive has lost its formatting or has no partition. All drives need at least one partition before they can be formatted followed by assigning a drive letter for those internal drives and sometimes the external USB or eSATA drives.

 

[Saltgrass]

If this was a USB device, I would also use Device Manager to do possibly two things.

First, set it to see hidden devices. If you see the drive there, uninstall it and all drivers then try again.

If you look at the Properties for some of the USB hubs there will be an Advanced tab. On that tab there is usually a Reset Hub button you could try.

Did that backup utility take control of the drive or just use it for storage?

 

[Joe Repetto]

I uninstalled the disc in disc manager and then asked it to check hardware and the disc was reinstalled, but it still doesn't show up on the computer. Before this it used to show as disc E. Disc manager shows the following:

I don't know where to go from here

 

[Joe Repetto]

correction. I didn't copy it right. The following is the full disc management:

 

[Bighorn]

It looks like Disk 1 has not been initialized. That can be a characteristic of what the power failure did. This is from the Help for Computer Management:
Initialize New Disks
Applies To: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2

Backup Operator or Administrator is the minimum membership required.

To initialize new disks

1. In Disk Management, right-click the disk you want to initialize, and then click Initialize Disk.
   
   
2. In the Initialize Disk dialog box, select the disk(s) to initialize. You can select whether to use the master boot record (MBR) or GUID partition table (GPT) partition style.

Note
The disk is initialized as a basic disk.
Additional considerations

• New disks appear as Not Initialized. Before you can use a disk, you must first initialize it. If you start Disk Management after adding a disk, the Initialize Disk Wizard appears so you can initialize the disk.

Basically I'd assume the disk may be lost but my last resort is to boot to a GPARTED LiveCD [a form/version of Linux Operating System] and try the disk, can create a new partition [or more] and format. Have seen a drive get reformatted as something Windows can't read and GPARTED usually sees several types of formatting, could even delete anything on a drive to give it an as-new partitioning/formatting.

 

[Joe Repetto]

I tried initializing disc1 and could not do so because not large enough, but found it was referring to a separate usb storage device not the WD Elements disc. So I disconnected the Elements disc from the computer and then reconnected it and it now shows up on the computer as drive E as it did before. So my problem is solved. thank you for your interest in my dilemma. I have to admit I am a novice at this.

 

[Bighorn]

Glad you got it working and you're welcome.