WD passport not showing up in explorer

Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
2
Reaction score
1
It does show up in computer management but all options are grayed out except for "delete volume" and "help". I use it for media storage and usually keep it plugged into my Xbox One for watching movies. Haven't used it in a couple months. It's also not showing up when plugged into the Xbox or my other laptop. Anyone have any ideas? I've enclosed an image from computer management. It shouldn't show those three sections as unallocated, should it? Also, when I chose to eject drives, it does show up as "eject elements 1023", so I know windows is at least kind of recognizing it. And I've tried reinstalling the driver.
 

Attachments

  • drive.JPG
    drive.JPG
    147.5 KB · Views: 15,492
Last edited:

Trouble

Noob Whisperer
Moderator
Joined
Nov 19, 2013
Messages
13,411
Reaction score
2,319
Hello and welcome to the forum.
It appears from your attached image that only a single partition (259.79 GB) on the drive was ever constructed and that, that partition does not currently have a drive letter nor an identifiable "File System" (NTFS or Fat32, ExFat, etc., ).
It shouldn't show those three sections as unallocated, should it?
Probably not, but.... without any information as to how you may have allocated the disk space historically, it would be difficult to say for sure.
It certainly looks like, multiple partitions, had at some point been created and then the volume(s) were deleted, leaving the partitions as "unallocated"

Do you have the option of connecting the same drive to another computer, just to check and see if the results are the same.

You might consider having a look at it with something like the free version of https://www.partitionwizard.com/download.html
Just to see if things look the same using a third party tool.

It's possible that some how the MBR (Master Boot Record) and or the File Allocation Table have been damaged or that the "Dock", "Connecting Cables", or the internal cross-over drive electronics have failed or are failing, that support the drive interface (SATA Internal) to USB (external) connectivity.
Worse case, I guess you could wipe it and start over. Hope you've backed up any crtical data that may have existed on it.
Good luck and keep us posted.
 
Joined
Nov 23, 2016
Messages
2
Reaction score
1
Thanks for the response, Trouble. It's just a lot of media that I'd rather not lose but not the end of the world. Just not sure how it would've happened. It wasn't like that before, the Xbox as well as both my laptops recognized it all the time and the entirety of the drive was available and not partitioned. Hadn't used it in a while and went to put something onto it, then this happened.

So it sounds like I probably won't be able to salvage the contents, rats. I downloaded partitionwizard after seeing it mentioned elsewhere (before making this topic, I always try to resolve stuff like this without asking when it's probably come up before) but I don't really know what I'm doing with the program and was worried I'd lose my data, though it seems like that doesn't matter at this point. I'll look around more after the holiday weekend I suppose, thank you again for the reply.
 
Joined
Oct 13, 2015
Messages
330
Reaction score
46
I have seen this asked many times in the WD external drive support forum. Off the top of my head I believe you need to assign drive letters in Windows 10 Disk Management before they will be seen properly. Go to the WD support forums and do a search. I know I have seen the fix listed there because I had to search for when I bought my WD MyBook. I just can't remember the exact solution right now.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Top