Vista 64-bit vs. WD My Book Premium external Hard Drive

Hi there,

I've just recently switched laptops - I had been using an old Dell running Windows 2000 Pro for years. I backed everything up a few years ago with the Western Digital My Book Premium 400GB external hard drive (WDG1C4000E) as my HDD got full.

That laptop died in June, and I've just recently received my new Rizeon (equivalent of Sager 5791) with Vista Ultimate 64-bit. However, when I try to connect the WD drive, Vista tries to locate drivers and cannot find any. It then ignores the "Unknown Device" and that is that - doesn't show up in My Computer and for all intents and purposes is not there.

I never used the bundled backup software on the WD drive - just manually transferred files over, so I don't need to run that software. I just assumed I would able to access the data I have stored on the disk.

I have hundreds of photos on there and 16,000+ MP3 files, so any help at all would be greatly appreciated as I'm at a bit of a loss.

I am by no means an expert on these matters, and thanks in advance,
David

 

Hmm my only guess is that windows 2000 must use the older format system while vista uses the newer one (NTFS) so you need to convert it over some how.

edit: Win 2000 also uses NTFS acording to google so maybe thats not the answer plus if it was FAT it would not be 400gb big.

 

I don't think that is the problem. Vista says that it the device cannot run without locating/installing a driver, and it can do neither.

The Western Digtal website offers nothing either (and their technical support is useless).

I'm really not looking forward to having to upload 1,000+ CDs again.

 

Does the external work on another computer? If not, then the external enclosure is the issue. All external drives contain a chip to convert the sata/ide to usb/firewire/eSata and to identify the device. If the OS is unable to identify the device, then most probably that chip is fried and the only thing left to do is to remove the hard drive and put it in another enclosure.

Hope this helps.

 

Please make sure to keep a back up of your music. In the event that something like this happens in the future again.

 

Pretty sure the External drive still works with other laptops, but I'll confirm that later on.

I can still rip my music off my iPod I guess, so not the end of the world, but it is pretty annoying all the same.

I've heard of this sort of thing happening to other users from browsing the forums, but yet to find a solution. Am I right in thinking that what should happen is just straightforward:

Connect ExHDD via USB, see it appear as a removable storage drive, transfer files.

 

Hmmm. Well the issue looks like your computer's USB mass storage device driver is messed up or something.

Just for kicks, to see if the OS can see the drive or not anyway:

1. Open up the start menu.
2. Type "Computer Management", click on it.
3. Click on Disk Management under Storage on the left column.

See what disks show up (with the drive connected) and see what their related information is. Whatever you do DO NOT FORMAT your drive, otherwise you will lose all of your data.

Easiest solution I can think of is to transfer your data off the drive to another computer, and then transfer it to your new computer.

 

Thanks. I'm not at home at the moment, so I'll have to have a look tonight. But at least I have a couple more ideas to try out now.

At worst, I should hopefully still be able to access the data by transferring it to another older laptop (no bluetooth, etc), then another external HDD, and then back to the new laptop.

Not really the hassle free Plug-and-play that Western Digital boast about though.

 

i'm not sure whether this would help, but i'm close to believing there might a problem with the drive forcing itself to sleep mode or something, maybe you should try putting your notebook with the extHDD connected into sleep mode and out of it, and if there's no difference try turning off your new laptop with the thing connected and then start it again. or maybe just a restart would suffice. but i'm no exHDD engineer, i only had a few similar incidents with the pnp devices that had 64bit vista problems till i did those 2 things mentioned earlier in this post. hope this might help...

btw. the standard question you could get, but with really lots of people forgetting to ask, have you tried turning it off and on again? i mean the drive...

cheers! hope you get the drive running!

 

Hello - thanks to all who posted ideas above. I eventually got the data off the Ex-HDD, but not by any obvious means. I still don't understand why, but not complaining. Here's what happened:

What didn't work:
Turning it on and off again
Plugging in the External drive when laptop was on/starting both together/using the Sleep idea above
Using other USB ports
Nothing appeared in Disk Management Under Storage

Girlfriend has an older laptop, but I bought her a newer Ext-HDD a few months back (a very romantic present). Tried connecting my Ext-HDD to her laptop to see if it was a problem with Vista 64 or the Ext-HDD. Didn't work there either, so that narrowed down the problem but offered no solution.

Tried connecting her newer Western Digital Ex-HDD to my Vista 64 laptop and hey presto, hers worked no problem. Tried mine again one last time in frustration and it suddenly appeared without a problem.

At first I thought maybe recognising one WD drive did the trick, but then her old laptop wouldn't recognise my External drive so that couldn't be the case.

So I've no idea but I'm happy. Here's hoping it will continue working so I can backup everything on it tonight.

Thanks again for your suggestions guys. I'd be lost sometimes without this website.