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After installing Windows 7 32-bit, my Western Digital Passport drive is being detected, but I cannot see a drive to open it.

I checked the drive on another system and it works, but not on mine.

What should I do?

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  • Did you install the WD software?
    – user3463
    Jun 3, 2012 at 3:38
  • Shouldn't need software to see a usb device. Does it show in device manager? Disconnect any other usb storage devices before you plug it in.
    – Moab
    Jun 3, 2012 at 19:21

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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Try this: right click on Computer from the start menu and click manage.

Go to Storage > Disk Management

If you can see the drive there Right click on it and click on Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Assign it any drive letter you want.

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If it is a newly bought one, you need to initialise it and format it, so that Windows 7 can see it.

Go to Storage > Disk Management:

Under your C drive, there will be a "New volume, uninitialised" - right click, initialise. Then it will change to "New volume, unallocated". Right click, allocate it a name and a drive letter, then format. It should be ready to use.

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  • WARNING! Be careful! it will format the disk and you will permanently loose all data on the disk
    – user507410
    Nov 19, 2016 at 16:28
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I have a Western Digital My Passport 1TB USB3 that is readable from a laptop, but would not appear as a drive on my PC that runs Windows 7 64bit. I fixed the problem by reinstalling the driver for the drive with the following steps:

  1. Open control panel, view devices and printers, find the drive (mine is labeled "My Passport 0730").
  2. Open properties of the drive, go to hardware tab, it will show 3 items in "device functions"
  3. Open the properties of the item with type "disk drives", press "change settings"
  4. Go to "driver" tab, press "uninstall" to uninstall the driver
  5. Unplug the drive, plug it back
  6. Windows will behave like the drive is plugged for the first time and install the driver for it

After those steps, I can read the drive normally.

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  • Did not work for me.
    – paulroho
    Oct 24, 2014 at 19:59
  • I like this method better than mine below. They both work for my similar troubles with my WD Passport, but this one is much easier to perform. Thanks Endy!
    – CitizenRon
    Nov 15, 2014 at 20:37
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Open Disk Management and see if the drive is shown in there.

enter image description here

Maybe it is not initialised yet, or it is initialised but does not have a drive letter assigned to it.

There's a 90% chance your problem is caused by one of these 2 things.

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This seems to be an odd issue with WD My Passport drives. For some reason, the USB registration of the WD Drive gets messed up. It happens to me every couple months with mine on Windows 7 64bit. Here's how I fix it:

  • Unplug the drive from the computer
  • Open a command prompt as Administrator
  • Type the following commands:
    • set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
    • devmgmt.msc
  • In the Device Manager:
    • Click View
    • Select Show Hidden Devices
    • Expand the Disk Drives section
    • Right-click any "WD My Passport" entries and select Uninstall
    • Expand your Universal Serial Bus controllers section
    • Right-click any entries here that are a light-grey icon and select Uninstall
  • Reconnect the WD My Passport drive and it should reappear as an available drive in Windows Explorer
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  • Thank you for your effort, but it did not help.
    – paulroho
    Oct 24, 2014 at 20:00

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