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General discussion

External hard drive is inaccessible

Jun 20, 2016 10:24PM PDT

I've recently had a problem accessing my western digital "My Passport" 2TB hard drive. I've posted similar questions at the WD support center and Microsoft support, but without any solution.

When I plug in the drive it shows up as a Local disk as opposed to the drive name (My Passport). It does not show the usual memory space "bar". If I double click the drive icon in "My Computer" I get a message stating "E\ is inaccessible. The request is not supported."

If I plug the hard drive into any other computer I have no issue accessing the drive. The problem seems to be unique to my laptop.

If I plug any other hard drive into the computer, it installs the requisite driver and I'm able to access it with no problem.

If I open disk management, the drive shows up as roughly 2TB in RAW format in a single, healthy partition.

Now, I've done the following to attempt resolving the issue:

- uninstalled and reinstalled all drivers for the hard drive and USB devices
-changed the drive letter
-ran check disk. When doing so, it recognizes that the disk is in NTFS format, and finds no errors.
-Checked the disk using @active partition recovery. When doing so, I can see that all files are intact. The partition appears to be in perfect health.
-Used western digital's lifeguard and drive utility software to check the disk status. SMART test was passed, and the drive is stated as healthy.
-Rebooted into safe mode, and was unable to access the drive.
-Ensured that my BIOS is up to date.

Does anyone have any idea why my laptop refuses to register the drive? I'm at wits end trying to access my files. It seems to be a software issue, as any other platform can access the drive without issue.

Best regards,

Kyle

Discussion is locked

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Since it works on another PC you need to copy this now.
Jun 21, 2016 7:48AM PDT

I solved this by formatting another drive on the machine that could read the HDD. Then off to the other PC to copy the drive to the newly formatted drive.

It's possible there is some WD "encryption" or "protection" software but I didn't find mention of that in your post. Such software can cause this issue.

This is why I use the copy to fix such an issue. Also it solves the other issue many forgot about which is to always keep backups.

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Or this may have something to do with the partition table.
Jun 21, 2016 6:41PM PDT

Don't ask me about it, I just hate these new stuff, it is still not clear in my head. I mean obviously something is not the same between these computers. You can take a look at the Hdd. and its partition system and see if it can give you some insight as to why. Have fun.