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Working External Hard Drive won’t appear in My Computer OR Disk Management.

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I’m working with SimpleTech SimpleDrive Turbo 640GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive and an ASUS K72 Series laptop with Windows 7 OS. I’ve used this hard drive on this computer before and it worked perfectly. Now, hooking it up a few months later, it won’t appear in My Computer OR Disk Management. It doesn’t show up period. I’ve checked the cables and everything is plugged in properly. When I plug it into my computer, the light turns on as it should and it goes warm and makes whirring noises as if it’s turning on, yet it still doesn’t appear ANYWHERE on my computer. My warranty is expired, and being a starving college student, I’m not exactly eager to be shopping for a new external hard drive. Okay, you geniuses out there, what do you have to say? What expertise do you have to share? Please help!

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Clarifications

In reply to Working External Hard Drive won’t appear in My Computer OR Disk Management.

Clarifications

Couple of things could be happening

In reply to Working External Hard Drive won’t appear in My Computer OR Disk Management.

First, if the laptop USB port is having a bad day, it may not be providing enough power to spin up the drive. This is not real likely, but if the drive has the same symptom plugged into another PC, then this is not the problem.

Try plugging into a different USB port.

If by any chance the drive came with a USB Y-cable, use it…the Y-cable gives the drive more power.

If we are fairly confident the drive is spinning up, then my next stop would be to do diags on the drive itself. SimpleTech was part of Hitachi, now part of Western Digital. Somewhere on their web site is a ‘drive fitness test’ program. Download and use it. If the drive fails the test, write down the serial number and make 100% sure it is out of warranty.

HINT: the drive enclosure with the drive in it has a warranty AND the hard drive inside the case has a warranty..sometimes the raw drive has warranty coverage longer than the enclosure/drive combo.

It’s possible that the enclosure is bad ($10 part) and the drive itself is good. So a google on ‘SATA laptop drive enclosure’ can find you a new enclosure. Then you transplant the drive into the new enclosure. It’s most likely a SATA interface drive.

www DOT hgst DOT com/portal/site/en/support/warranty/

On the site above you enter the serial number (s) to check eligibility for Warranty. Hitachi laptop drives have a three year warranty.

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