Western Digital 1TB WD ELEMENTS USB 20DESKTOP EXTERNAL HARD DRIVE - Answered Questions & Fixed issues

Use Malwarebytes a free remover, also delete all your restore points. Use CCleaner to clean up your startup items, the do a regedit command from start run, and search for that name. Delete all entries with that name.

That probably means that the hard drive is what I like to call "roasty toasty." Most often, when you hear beeps, that is caused by the drive receiving bad instructions from a corrupted/failed logic board. Data can still be retrieved from such a drive by a professional data recovery company (if this is of interest to you) and is most often quite successful in this situation since there is no physical damage to the read-write heads or the platters themselves. However, using such a service is still quite cost-prohibitive (generally around $1000 for a reputable company). If the data is not that important to you, then just pitch the drive and get a new one.

Hi Arun, try to rmove the driver and reinstall it again, you do it in this way : Go to Control Panel and press on devices here you find the driver for you external drive and right click on it and choose remove driver. Remember for finding the driver you need to have your device inserted to the computer. Hope it helps otherwise return here

You may take a look at this external hard drive data recovery tutorial that helped me before.

Two of the most common causes of I/O (Input / Output) device errors are driver based. Typically, either the device's driver is not enabled or it is out of date. The driver component has an important function, as it acts as a motor like force that propels USB/plug-and-play hardware into a driving action within the computer. It is the connecting communicating link signaling the CPU to a desired movement. And while not all I/O device error solutions are simplistic, as a good starting point, you can try troubleshooting using a few basic steps, and you might not need to attempt anything else. Access "Control Panel" from the Start menu and then choose "Performance and Maintenance." Click "System" and then go to the Hardware tab and click on "Device Manager." Find the device that is registering an error by expanding the nodes of the appropriate category. If the device has a red "X" on the icon next to its description, the hardware is disabled; Otherwise, Go to the General tab and click "Enable Device" found under the Device Status section; then press "OK." (Note: You may have to follow prompts, as indicated through an enabling device wizard. If you do, continue to click "Next" and follow the prompts until the process has completed.) Test the hardware. If an error is shown. Go to the General tab and click "Troubleshoot" found under the Device Status section then press "OK." Follow the prompts to solve the issue. If an error is still shown Go to the Driver tab and click "Update Driver." Follow the prompts until the process has completed and then test the hardware. Hope this helps.

Have you tried to shut down the computer, unplug the usd external drive, reboot the computer, plug in the USB external HDD the should apply the driver. That said, Have you tried a Thumb Drive or any other USB device in the USB ports? It's a common problem when upgrading a OS that Hardware issues popup. Open the Device Manager, Is your USB controller working? Enabled? Any other devices in error? Unknown devices? Use the Win 7 drivers for your computer found on the computer manufacturer's website. Change the compatibility on the driver for Win 8.

You have to be the computers administrator to change any values on any hard drive on your computer. Click start control panel user accounts on the users tab click the name of the computer Administrator you must have full control. Click start click to open on my computer you should see your drive could be E: or something right click select properties there will be an array of options select the sharing tab option then advanced sharing make sure you have a tick in the share this folder box then click permissions make sure you have all 3 boxes ticked full control changes and read in windows 7 If you are running a Windows XP OS then you might be able to: Click start right click on my computer select open Right click the icon of your Drive (It should be F:/ or something) Click Properties in the menu that comes up Click the Sharing tab Click permissions And finally, click Allow next to Full Control. Hope this helps

You have to be the computers administrator to change any values on any hard drive on your computer

click start control panel user accounts on the users tab click the name of the computer administrator you must have full control

click start click to open on my computer you should see your usb drive could be E: or something right click select properties there will be an array of options

select the sharing tab option then advanced sharing make sure you have a tick in the share this folder box

then click permissions make sure you have all 3 boxes ticked full control changes and read in windows 7

click start control panel user accounts click on the administrators account if you have made one or you will have to create one in windows XP

click start right click on my computer select openRight click the icon of your usb drive (It should be E:/ or something) Click Properties in the menu that comes up Click the Sharing tab Click permissions And finally, click Allow next to Full Control. if you need more help with this post a replyHope this helps.

Sub the cable if possible, if no! you may have a open winding in the hardware, not much you can do, the hard drives are sealed to keep dirt out and not made to be serviced.

Try the WD USB hard drive in another computer. If you can access your data on another computer then backup your data.If the WD USB hard drive is faulty then -It is not possible to recover data from faulty hard drivesby mortals such as you and I.There are companies that can recover data from faulty and damaged hard drivesBUT they wll charge an arm and a leg for their services.

Below are the links which help you more then manualhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8VD7IbgXjwhttp://support.wdc.com/product/install.asp?wdc_lang=en&fid=wdsfElements_Desktophttp://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/QIG/global/4079-705075.pdf

Try to update the firmware for your WD HDD from computer device manager.

I'm guessing the HDD needs to be reformatted. To reformat... ALERT THIS WILL ERASE EVERYTHING ON YOUR HARD DRIVE. if there is import information that is not backed up, back it up on a computer that recognizes the drive. Go to control panel in the start menu, then to system and security, then Administrative tools, then computer management, then storage, Disk management, This will list all storage devices that are connected to the computer. Based on the names you should be able to tell which one is the western digital. Right click, format and follow the formatting wizard. Format the drive as NTFS. Allocate all available space to 1 NTFS partition unless you would like multiple partitions.

Dose it show up as drive letter E:/ underdevice manager in disk drives?(Check out:right clicking my computer icon onyour desktop,select disk manager)
If so,try right clicking on my computer and selecting map network drive.(You'llget the same results by right clicking on network neighborhood icon on yourdesktop and selecting map network drive.)This is the method many people use toassign a drive name (i.e.,letter) to a drive.
How about asking you to format it before you can use it?Then you can recover data from hard drive with datarecovery software like Tenorshare Data Recovery.It can recover data afterdeeply scanning your hard drive to look for lost data.

Hi there.

Can you try to connect this hard drive with a different computer and let me know what happens.

Thank you!

You do need to reformat your drive format as FAT32 filesystem.

MAC computers use a different filesystem to arange data on your hard drive, if you are switching back and forth between Windows and MAC platforms, you will need to reformat the drive to the FAT32 filesystem.

To do this, from your Windows system, connect your drive, right click on the drive and select Format, select FAT32 from the Filesystem drop down menu. Once the format is complete you should be able to use the drive on either system.

There might be virus issue, scan it with update anti virus application in another comptuer also run check disk. if possible change the usb cable too

Just check in device manager...whether is detected by the computer.
you can go to my computer...right click on it...then click on manage.

if its detected there then go device manager...then go to disk management under storage...right click on the drive there with no name then click on change drive name letter..hit ok,,check in my computer you will see the harddrive there...else if you don't see anything in device manager...contact the manufacturer.

You should not even try to install an operating system on an external drive. Windows looks at the "C" drive and installs programs to "C" drive. You are trying to put it on the "G" drive. You will have too many problems and wish you never had tried. Buy a larger main drive and partition it with two equal partitions. Then "Dual Boot". You will find how to do this on the internet. Just Google "Dual Booting".