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I recently bought a Kingwin EZ-Dock Model EZD-2535U3 so that I could use some HDDs and SSDs I had laying around for back ups. At the same time I bought a brand new Western Digital WD NAS Red 4TB HDD.

The other drives that I had prior are a 128GB Samsung SSD, a 500GB Seagate Laptop HDD, and another 3TB Western Digital Green HDD.

My issue is that neither of the Western Digital drives will show up when in the dock. Both the Samsung and Seagate work show up and I have used them both to transfer data. I have tried multiple times to get them to show up and made sure they were seated correctly.

The only idea that I can gather, and it was just a "faint" random forum post (and I don't think this makes sense, but I can't convince myself either way) is that the Western Digitals think that they are "Master" drives and will not respond to puny slave requests to allow them to be read or written to.

Any idea what could be happening?

EDIT: Over the weekend I returned the Kingwin dock along with the 4TB Western Digital and bought a Nexstar Model CB-SATAU3-6 and a 1TB Western Digital Black HDD.

To keep it short, I am having the exact same issues. Both the Seagate and Samsung drives work with the new Nexstar and both of the 2TB and new 1TB Western Digitals will not show up in Windows.

I am not sure what the next steps should be now. I guess I could go buy another dock/USB-SATA device and try again or maybe the device is not the issue? I talked with the microcenter rep for a while and he said that he has used this specific Nexstar to hook up many types of drives (for what that's worth). So I might assume it is an issue with Western Digital or my current hardware setup..?

EDIT2: Here is what the device manager shows when a WD HDD is docked with the Nexstar. The C: and D: drives are my internal HDDs. enter image description here

And here is what is shown when the 500 GB Seagate is docked enter image description here

So it does look like the WD is recognized but it does not show up as a drive in windows explorer.

EDIT3: 1TB WD: I first plugged in the new 1TB WD drive and opened up the disk management tool. Upon opening the tool it told me that the disk space was unrecognized and needed to be formatted (I don't think that is the right term) to MBR or GPT, I chose GPT.

After I selected GPT the drive still showed as unallocated. I then chose to format it to NTFS and did not select a drive letter. It still did not show up in explorer. I then chose to "change drive letter and paths". Once I assigned it a drive letter it showed up in explorer.

I then undocked it and redocked it and it showed up just as if I plugged in a USB drive. So I have to assume I am all good now.

3TB WD: When I plugged in the 3TB WD I opened the disk management utility to find that it has 3 partitions (I am not sure what they are of). I then deleted each partition and formatted the entire drive, giving it a drive letter also. Once this was done it showed up in windows explorer. I undocked and redocked it, it then showed up as if I plugged in a USB device. So I have to assume it is also all good.

So in the end, I would have to assume I could have also done this with the Kingwin dock and I was just too inept in my decisions.

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  • Have you tried turning your computer off -> plugging the WD disk into the dock -> plug the dock into the USB port -> boot your computer?
    – Kinnectus
    Aug 21, 2015 at 12:09
  • I want to say I have, I tried a few different ways, but I will again later today when I have a chance and comment on the results.
    – KDecker
    Aug 21, 2015 at 12:10
  • It looks like your issue is similar to this one in that the proprietary way that the dock tries to handle storage devices is not compatible with some drive models.
    – Deltik
    Aug 21, 2015 at 12:12
  • @Deltik That sounds like its the issue. I guess I possibly have to (sadly :)) take another trip to MicroCenter to find another dock.
    – KDecker
    Aug 21, 2015 at 12:21
  • WD disks are not usable on every dock. I think you should either replace the disks or get a dock that is certified for WD.
    – harrymc
    Aug 24, 2015 at 12:58

2 Answers 2

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When a new disk fails to show up in Windows Explorer, there can be two reasons :

1. A missing disk driver

In some rare cases, the new disk requires a proprietary driver and cannot work with the one supplied by Windows.

To check, open up Device Manager and check whether the new disks are visible under the Disk drives branch or under Unknown devices.

In the first case, Windows has correctly identified the disk. In the second case, a proprietary driver needs to be installed from either a CD supplied with the disk or downloaded from the manufacturer's website.

Once the disk is correctly identified in the Device Manager, we continue to the second phase.

2. The disk was factory-formatted in an incompatible manner

Windows is pretty particular about the way the disk should be formatted. If an external disk is partitioned into multiple partitions, it risks to be unrecognized, or worse, only the first partition is recognized. A new disk should always be examined for such problems before being used.

Open Computer Management and click on Disk Management, then wait for the disk to show up.

If the disk is partitioned, right-click all partitions and choose Delete.

Once the entire disk is one unallocated space, right-click and choose New Simple Volume, then follow the wizard. Be careful to format all disks larger than 2 TB as GPT, since the other option, MBR, will not use more than the first 2.2 TB of the disk.

Once the disk is formatted and assigned a disk-letter, it is available as a normal disk.

For more information, see this How-To Geek article :
Understanding Hard Drive Partitioning with Disk Management.

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Drives never show up in Windows Explorer. It would make no sense if they did.

Imagine, for example, if a drive with two partitions showed up in Windows Explorer and you double-clicked on it, which partition would it open? If you dragged a file to it, which partition would it go to?

Only mounted filesystems show in Windows Explorer. If a drive has no mounted filesystems, it does not, and should not, show up in Windows Explorer.

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  • This makes sense. It also now makes sense that the brand new WD HDDs would not show up because they have no filesystem until they are formatted to be one. // Can only partition on a drive then be a mounted filesystem?
    – KDecker
    Aug 25, 2015 at 0:31
  • @KDecker If a drive has only one partition, and on that partition is a mounted filesystem, then that filesystem will show up. However, the drive itself will still not show up.
    – David Schwartz
    Aug 25, 2015 at 0:32

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