External drive shows no partitions on one computer only
The customer has a 4TB external drive she has been using with no problem for six months on her Win10 PC, creating backup files on it each week.
But as of today, it won't pop up the drive letters, so I went to Windows Disk Management screen, and there it shows the entire 4TB drive with no partitions or drive letters. Yet if I take the external drive over to a Windows 7 PC in the office, it works like normal, showing the drive letters and all the files and folders.
I also tried plugging a different 500GB external drive into the Win10 PC, and it too appears with no partitions. On the left, it says:
Disk 1
Basic
465.76 GB
Online
And to the right of that is one large unallocated partition that shows:
465.76GB
Healthy (Primary Partition)
Note that I have restarted and also tried multiple USB ports. Any ideas on what is happening and how to fix it will be appreciated.
But as of today, it won't pop up the drive letters, so I went to Windows Disk Management screen, and there it shows the entire 4TB drive with no partitions or drive letters. Yet if I take the external drive over to a Windows 7 PC in the office, it works like normal, showing the drive letters and all the files and folders.
I also tried plugging a different 500GB external drive into the Win10 PC, and it too appears with no partitions. On the left, it says:
Disk 1
Basic
465.76 GB
Online
And to the right of that is one large unallocated partition that shows:
465.76GB
Healthy (Primary Partition)
Note that I have restarted and also tried multiple USB ports. Any ideas on what is happening and how to fix it will be appreciated.
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The only step I've taken is the first one using the Diskpart command, because that worked--but I don't understand WHY it worked. I had to do the Diskpart commands on both of those external drives I described, and then they both worked fine on my Win10 PC. And, after a reboot they continue to work fine.
It seems like if it was a drive problem, I wouldn't have been able to access them on the other computer. But if it was a Win10 problem, it seems like I would had to do this Diskpart procedure every time I plugged in the drives. If this makes sense to anyone, please help me understand how this can be.
Meanwhile, I've plugged in additional external USB drives and flash drives and they have all displayed files and folders just fine.
It seems like if it was a drive problem, I wouldn't have been able to access them on the other computer. But if it was a Win10 problem, it seems like I would had to do this Diskpart procedure every time I plugged in the drives. If this makes sense to anyone, please help me understand how this can be.
Meanwhile, I've plugged in additional external USB drives and flash drives and they have all displayed files and folders just fine.
That's great to hear, thankyou
Makes no sense. Diskmanagement uses diskpart (or the api behind it) after all, so results should be the same. Nevertheless, one should try different approaches with all the bugs and defects around.
your words>
and there it shows the entire 4TB drive with no partitions or drive letters. Yet if I take the external drive over to a Windows 7 PC in the office, it works like normal, showing the drive letters and all the files and folders.< how many partitions is on this drive?
What brand is it does it have diagnostic tools?
Is it a WD My Book? These have unique partition in front of the main partition used for the WD Smartware
Look in This computer see if there is this CD drive emulator, it for this very reason I will never use the My Book as windows doesn't like this partition and can stop seeing the main partition, the only solution is to a quick format you may not lose any files, when my windows stopped seeing the drive and threw a message it had to formatted I nearly had a fit as I had all my files on board so quickly used my Get Data Back and it is then I discovered this partition in front, it cannot be removed. But a quick format restored the drive and windows saw the main partition I didn't lose any files. But I nolonger trusted it. And this was a week after I had bought it.