Hi geniuses!
I've been trying to sort out an issue I'm having for some time but, so far, I've failed to locate anyone with a solution. Hopefully someone here is smarter than everyone else I've asked!
So the item in question is my Western Digital 2.0TB External. Worked fine for a few months and then win7 can't see it. It shows in Devices as "Ext HDD 2021" but not in My Computer. It also shows in Disk Management as unallocated space. Right clicking only allows me to select properties or help and Initialize Disk is also grayed out.
I can't use chkdsk because I can't allocate a drive letter by any means I'm aware of.
I've also tried TestDisk but it can't find any partitions and just gets read errors even after a deeper search and changing the head values.
I know that it's unstable and I have backups of most of the stuff on there but I'd still like to use it on occasion. I'm sure I can recover some of what is lost after a quick format but how do I run a quick format on this inaccessible drive? Or perhaps there is some magical cure to my predicament?
Any help would be appreciated! :thumb:
[UPDATE]: So occasionally Initialize Disk becomes available but, when I click on it, Windows tells me the media is write protected. Hmm..
I've been trying to sort out an issue I'm having for some time but, so far, I've failed to locate anyone with a solution. Hopefully someone here is smarter than everyone else I've asked!
So the item in question is my Western Digital 2.0TB External. Worked fine for a few months and then win7 can't see it. It shows in Devices as "Ext HDD 2021" but not in My Computer. It also shows in Disk Management as unallocated space. Right clicking only allows me to select properties or help and Initialize Disk is also grayed out.
I can't use chkdsk because I can't allocate a drive letter by any means I'm aware of.
I've also tried TestDisk but it can't find any partitions and just gets read errors even after a deeper search and changing the head values.
I know that it's unstable and I have backups of most of the stuff on there but I'd still like to use it on occasion. I'm sure I can recover some of what is lost after a quick format but how do I run a quick format on this inaccessible drive? Or perhaps there is some magical cure to my predicament?
Any help would be appreciated! :thumb:
[UPDATE]: So occasionally Initialize Disk becomes available but, when I click on it, Windows tells me the media is write protected. Hmm..