I have plugged in the Firelite external hard drive. The drive doesnt show up on my laptop. When i clicked on "Safely remove hardware" and it says its connected.

External hard drives are portable storage devices you can use to back up files or transfer content from one computer to another quickly and safely.

While external hard drives vary in design and storage capacity, turning them off properly is ideal because it decreases the chances of damaging or corrupting files.

Whether you are using Windows or Mac OS X, you can safely eject and turn off your external hard drive in minutes.

Safely eject your external hard drive before turning it off if you have connected it to your computer.

To do so, click the "Safely remove hardware" icon on the system tray on the taskbar. T
he hardware window launches.


Click your external hard drive's icon in the hardware window and click the "Stop" button. You should see the "This device can now be safely removed from your computer" dialog message.

Press the "Power" button to turn off your external hard drive.
Some external hard drives turn off automatically when you safely eject them.

Right-click your external hard drive's icon on the desktop if you are using a Mac, and then click "Eject."

Alternatively, drag your external hard drive's icon from the desktop to the "Trash" bin.
You should no longer see your hard drive on the desktop.

Press the "Power" button to turn off your external hard drive

if it doesnt show you external drive try changing the cable which connects the drive to the pc

you might want to try to unplug to HD's power and plug it back in then plu the USB into you computer....make sure that you remove the usb safely and not just unplug it.

it is because some process may e working with the files on the harddisk.or some windows may be open.

it sounds like a hardrive issue. You can have the data retrieved from your hard drive by using this online company that I highly recommend:
http://www.gillware.com/

Connect it to your computer.
Right click on my computer and select Manage
On the left side click on Disk management.

Now on the right side, look around and see if you spot the external drive there.

What do you see there?

Also look into device manager, then look for anything with ! or ? yellow marks.

try other usb port, or other computer and see whether the hdd is detected. If still not, try to go to device manager ( http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000833.htm ), and then assign a drive letter to the hdd. After that, try to access it from Computer, if not able to access it, format it (use quick format) and then use this data recovery program to recover your files.
http://www.asoftech.com/adr/

i fixed my problem by going to the western digital site and downloaded the installation package. i installed it and next thing i knew it started working again. hope that may help if anyone runs into a similar problem

ok...well...then if it is compatible with your current operating system, then it should work. is this a first time install?

Try these steps: - Right-click on "My Computer" - Click "Manage" - Click on the "Disk Management" icon in the left column (Under the "Storage" category" - If your disk appears on the right-hand side, then try to right-click on it and create a partition. The issue may just be that, since the disk is not partitioned/formatted, a drive letter has not been assigned, which would cause it to not show up in the "My Computer" list Good luck!