the vanishing hard drive

kindpastor

Geek Trainee
I own a 70 GB western digital series II USB hard drive:

Serial Number: WMAJ51514402
Model Number: WD800B008

This device worked find up until december 24th--I had it plugged in to my computer and was downloading a large number of avi files onto it (legit). I left to attend a short function and returned to find an error message sating that my e: drive (the external) had been unplugged, I checked and found it was still attached. I unplugged it from my computer and then plugged it back in--it appeared but only 1 folder showed up when I explored the drive with windows explorer. Now windows does not recognize my hard drive, when I plug it into my computer it appears in the device manager as "USB mass storage device" but it does not appear as a drive on windows explorer. I am stumped, and worried as many important files were on this drive.
 
If you got any additonal drivers for it, try reinstalling them.

Also try using the add new hardware wizard,search for new hardware and let windows search for a driver for itself.
 
Tried that--now the drive shows up on the diagnositc tool "western digital has their own diagnostic tool" but not in explorer, when I ran a test in the diagnostic it said "cable error" but my usb cable looks fine.
 
Anti-Trend said:
Have you checked whether the drive is mounted to a drive letter in the Windows volume manager?

Sorry about this--but I am a total n00b and I'm not sure how to acces the volume manager.
 
Update: found the volume manager but the hard drive does not appear there eaither, it only appears in the device manager.
 
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