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When powering down my Western Digital My Book 1TB external hard drive I see this and get this message

I recently took two old IDE hard drives that had data on it I wanted to keep, so I used a USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE Adapter to transfer the data from my old IDE hard drives onto my Western Digital My Book 1TB external hard drive. After I transferred the data, I decided to format my two old IDE drives, by right clicking my computer, then selecting manage, then going to disk management and formatting them that way. One hard drive formatted fine noticed nothing, I noticed I took the other drive, which is a 40GB, when I went to my computer it only saw it as a 18GB, so in disk management I saw the drive, but it look like it had two 18GB parts on the same drive, so what I did was I formatted one and then still said 18GB for one, but the other said unallocated, so I formatted both and then it was one unallocated, I was able to see the hard drive of 40GB. So now after I power down my Western Digital My Book 1TB external hard drive, I see these, the two pictures I posted. When I double click on this Local Disk H, I get this message, When the My Book shuts off completely, the Local Disk H disappears. Can someone help me find a way whenever I power down my Western Digital My Book 1TB external hard drive, I don't get or see this?

Thanks Experts,
Local-Disk-H.jpg
Local-Disk-H-Error.jpg

Christian de Bellefeuille

I'm not sure to understand what you mean. So ...
What's your drive letter for your My Books
What's your drive letter for your older drives?

You get this error message as soon as you click on H: or as soon as you turn of your My Books?

ASKER

The My Book is drive letter (H:)
The IDE drive is New Volume (F:)

I never seen this before until I formatted the IDE drives. When I power on the My Book I don't see "Other Local Disk (H:) at all with a red question mark". The only (H:) I see is My Book (H:) when It's turned on. I only see this message if I double click on the "Other Local Disk (H:) at all with a red question mark" when It's powering off.

Christian de Bellefeuille

So it's some sort of "Ghost Drive Letter". The problem is that your Explorer doesn't update the drive status properly, it's not that you get this error message when you click on it :).

have you tried mapping it with another drive letter in the Disk Management to see if Windows still see a Ghost Drive?

well how come in the pictures you dont have a main harddrive? you only have cd roms drives?

Christian de Bellefeuille

lukefuno:
On my laptop, its separated in few sections (like bellow)... he just cropped the part that concern us probably. External drives and Internal Drives are not together.. as you see, there`s no Drive F: too...

Hard disk drives

Local Disk (C:)

Devices with Removable Storage

DVD-RW Drive (D:)
U3 System (E:)
KINGSTON U3 (F:)

Other

My Bluetooth Places...

Christian de Bellefeuille

The My Books is an USB drive, not a NAS drive (ethernet) if my memory is good. So it can't be caused by a bad manual mapping since its autodetected once its connected.

But i wonder if you see it when you type a NET USE from command prompt?

If you do a NET USE and see a drive H:, you should do a delete on it (NET USE H: /DELETE)

if not, then i would go back into disk management and make sure you re- map a main c drive first, and then map the cd roms.

reboot.

then plug and chug your external in pc and see if OS commits error again.

Have you tried to go through the [Safely Remove Hardware Wizard] to remove the drive?
And then reboot the system, with the drive connected, and it will reinstall it.
And there "should" not be no more issue with it.

I run into this issue every once in a while, and that is what I do to correct it.

Good Luck
Carrzkiss

ASKER

cdebel - I have the My Book connected using USB.

lukefuno - can you explain to me how to map C drive then map the cd roms? CD Rom (E:) is a virtual rom.

carrzkiss - tried your method, no success

well unmount the E virtual rom drive first (whatever program is running that) you may just r-click on the drive and click unmount or disable.

then go back into disk management find your c drive - if it has c drive already then leave it as is. then in disk management too, look at your real cd rom drive and right click it, and see if there is a menu to change drive letter option. you then choose a drive letter of D.

reboot.

then make sure your virtual drive doesn't start up again and look under my pc and make sure all looks ok with main HDD as C and CDROM as D

then plug in your usb drive and see what happens.

is this making sense?

snip1.PNG

ASKER

lukefuno - thanks for showing me how to map (C:) and my other DVD-ROM, I did what you said to try, and still no success. (C:) was already set and my real DVD-ROM was already set to (D:) so I switched it to (E:) then rebooted then switched it back to (D:). I have a backup image of my computer, would going back with the image correct this? It's not a hard drive issue? I can access the My Book just fine, is the data on the My Book okay?

hey did the external hdd come with a disc? why you dont you reinstall the drivers for the external drive?

also provide another screen shot of my computer w/usb connected.

i want to see what everything looks like.

thanks,

ASKER

lukefuno - it didn't come with any discs that came with drivers. With the screenshot do you want (C:) (F:) and (H:) showing altogether? I'll post the picture when I get home tonight.

Thanks,

yes .

but it sounds like your error message comes when powering down the external? right?

ASKER

Correct but this only started to happen when I formatted the old IDE drive through USB, I did however have both the My Book and the IDE drive plugged in and both were running at the same time. Could this of cause some kind of conflict?

just do this then, boot into safe mode and see if the error message pops up!!!

ASKER

Okay, I'll try that.

i was thinking about it though,,, safe mode may disable usb ports but try anyway.

if that doesnt work....plugin your external hdd, and,
while your in NORMAL mode, delete the usb driver associated with External HDD in Device Manager, under USB drives. see pic.

power external down and then power back on. then power back down to see if error pops up again.

usbdriver.png

ASKER

So when I power on the My Book, see which USB driver(s) show up in Device Manager and then delete them?

Thanks,

yes,

then after done deleting, power down drive. log out, then
log back in,

then, power back on drive and see if it gets correct driver and drive letter.

ASKER

Okay, I'll give this a try. It's funny I never seen this before, it's strange, usually I would be able to figure out what's causing the problem.

Thanks,

well i think thats why you are now using ee. :)

ASKER

Maybe... :)

ASKER

I could try a couple of things, I have a backup image of my computer before this problem occured, I can try using the image that I know that worked and see if that fixes the problem. I can also just unplug the My Book without powering it down using the power button on the back of the My Book.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

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oh i see, ok then just unplug it from computer instead of using the power button.

or just leave it on until windows shuts down and then power off drive.

why keep it as fat32? i dont think you can go back to fat32 unless you format it back which will lose your data, so you need to backup the backup.

have you tried to plug the old drives back in like before, and see if they give errors?
If not, then instead of just unplugging them, choose to [Eject] the drive(s) through the
[Safely Remove Hardware Wizard]
Do this to both the old drives, but leave your new drive plugged in.
And then reboot the computer.

Maybe it is trying to assign the same information to the new drive that 1 of the older drives had.
Give this a shot, nothing lost nothing gained right?

Let me know?
Carrzkiss

ASKER

carrzkiss - I tried that method already, no success.

have a look here and see if it will help.
Running chkdsk for possible errors (Doubt this one)
http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/691202-f-refers-location-unavailable-how.html
restoring defaults (Maybe)
http://forums.techarena.in/vista-help/801087.htm#post4080088

good luck, and hope that you can fix this issue.
Carrzkiss

ASKER

Thanks carrzkiss but I already figured out what was causing the problem. You guys are great!

Skywalker.
Since you figured it out, let us know?

Carrzkiss

ASKER

carrzkiss - I posted it already in comment ID: 24331730.

[Quote from Skywalker]
===============================
My Book shuts down quicker before Windows recognizes it, so it shows another drive quickly and then when I double click on it, it gives that message.
===============================
OK. When the hard drive shuts down, and it shows another drive (Ghost Drive in this case)
That is not a good thing, you need to research why this drive is doing this.

Other then that, glad that you figured it out.
I deal with so many questions on here that I did not catch the post that you made about figuring it out.
Sorry for that misunderstanding on my part.
But still, try to find out what it causing the drive to ghost itself.

Good Luck
Carrzkiss

ASKER

carrzkiss - don't worry about it, I deal with many questions as well and I don't catch certain posts either :) It looks as that I figured out was as wrong, because I tried it on a different computer and I got the same results.

Thanks again to everyone who participated in this question!