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    WD My Book not recognized by Windows 8.1

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by newvelaric, Nov 5, 2013.

  1. newvelaric

    newvelaric Notebook Consultant

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    Guys, as my title implies, Windows 8.1 cannot recognize my external harddrive "My Book" 4Tb. It was working fine yesterday morning, then I packed it into a bag and went on a trip. At my destination, I plugged it into my Blade-R2 with Windows 8.1, at first my Blade-R2 was able to recognize the WD hardrive, but some of the files that I have renamed were changed back to their original names. When I closed Windows Explorer and then reopened it, my Blade was no longer able to access the harddrive. Windows still recognized the Drive letter, which is "F:" but it no longer had the name I gave it, it is now called "Local Disk". Also when I tried to access the files I had in it with Windows Explorer, Windows 8.1 said it could do so because of "F:/ is not accessible. The file of directory is corrupted and unreadable".

    So I turned off my laptop and allowed the HDD to rest, and I tried again this AM. Same problem... I then tried by keeping the HDD connected to the laptop for the last 6 hours, still no access. In fact, I find that Windows Explorer takes longer to do things since the problem started.

    I also made sure that the HDD is well plugged in, my UBS 3.0 cable is just 1.5 foot long. I checked both on another HDD, they worked fine.

    I tried by going into the "device manager" and checked for updates for my HDD. There were none. The device manager does recognize the existence of my HDD... I then went into the "disk management" and changed the drive letter to "H:", but no effect.

    I then used Recuva by right-clicking my HDD and chose "scan for deleted files". And Recuva founds files that I remember deleting...

    I am at a lost guys, some softwares do "see" my HDD "My Book", but for sure Windows Explorer does not. Is there a way to save my HDD. If not can you advise me on how to completely and safely extract my data?
     
    newvelaric, Nov 5, 2013
    #1