Bricked protable hard drive.

So I plugged in my WD 60gb passport portable USB Harddrive. I opened it up to explore and then it would not register and said I needed to reformat. UGH! Oh well there was all duplicate info on there anyways, so I started the reformat. Well stupid me I unplugged it before it was done in a hurry to do something else, and now it wont even show up on my computer. It does show up under the disk manager, but does not have a drive letter assigned to it. I can't change no properties of the drive or assign a drive letter to it. All I want to do is reformat it so I can have a spare drive for moving around files. Did I brick this thing beyond repair?? Is it now a doorstop?
TIA
Walter

 

Try formatting it again from within Disk Management.

 

It doesn't even give me the option too. I will post some try again when I get home, but Disk Management will not even let me try and format it. I have tried to on 4 different computers. 2 with vista and 2 with xp.

 

See if Partition Wizard can do anything with it. It's free and works quite well. http://www.partitionwizard.com/

 

Yah, if the master partition table has been messed up, a windows consumer desktop (non-Server OS) will have problems seeing the disk.

Can your device manager at least see the usb storage controller? Might be listed as a "USB Mass Storage Device" or something similar.

 

This is what I see.

When I try to initialize it gives me an error.

 

I just tried partitionwizard. Ill attach a picture of what it shows. It Says bad disk. I can hear it spin up, and I can stop it using the icon on the task bar, but all options to work on the disk are grayed out on PW. Any thoughts?

 

Try GParted

 

If you're under Windows XP try to use DiskPart. I think it is also available in Vista. This tools is well documented in the help file of Windows. To run this tool:
Start --> Run --> key in 'CMD' --> key in 'DiskPart'

Not all hardrive's enclosures are equal. I think what has happend in your case is the electric power provided by your laptop USB port to your HDD enclosure was not enough. That has led windows to think that your harddrive was not formatted.

Just to be in the safe side, before trying DiskPart, test your harddrive on a different laptop or even better on a desktop, since the desktops don't usually suffer from a lack of electrical power.

 

i would recommend trying GParted like flipfire suggested. dont use the terrible windows port though i would recommned downloading a linux live disc and using that. one i like to use for hdd issues is ubuntu.

 

Try this... I know you're not running a server OS, but if none of the above will work, I guess there's nothing to lose. I know I can use this on Windows 7 64-bit.

EDIT: It's a "how-to" for what naton suggested.