Windows 8 won't access newly installed 2TB hard drive. 1

[rivermonster]

All, anybody who has any ideas or tips--they would be greatly appreciated.

Here's the situation:

On a Dell Studio XPS 435MT (i7 processor, 9GB dd3 ram, 4 SATA connectors, running windows 8--with latest bios upgrade)

I've had 2 drives working in the system great, the original OEM drive 640Gig, and a 1TB HItatchi (scavenged from an external and installed internal).

I recently removed my WD 2TB my book hard drive and installed it internally. The drive is specifically a WD20EADS-11R6B1.

When I boot up and look in the bios it recognizes the drive and identifies it correctly. And when I startup Windows 8 the drive shows up in device manager, reporting that it's working properly. But it does NOT show up in explorer or my computer.

I've tried the following:

1) Changing the SATA cable

2) Switching the SATA cable to the other open connector on the motherboard

3) Deactivating and re-enabling the drive in Windows 8 under the properties dialogue

4) Uninstalling the drive in Windows 8 and rebooting (it shows back up but same problem, not accessible)

5) Changed the power connector to the drive

6) Disconnected the optical drive and tried booting (and then reconnected it) -- no change at all from this.

Of note: There are spots for jumpers on the drive, so maybe it's a matter of setting those?

My next steps after I post this:

1) Disconnect the 2nd drive that was working fine and connect the non-recognized one to it's connectors. Maybe there's an issue with 3 hard drives? (though with 4 SATA connectors, not sure why 3 would be a problem)

As I mentioned--any ideas would be GREATLY appreciated. I can throw it back into the external case, but my computer HATES external drive and it causes a host of other issues. So I'd much rather try and power through and get this thing working properly as an internal storage.

Thanks,

RM

2) Try and research the jumpers some more.

 

[rivermonster]

Update #1: Switched the new 2TB drive with the old Hitachi 1TB (which was working fine as the second drive before), left the old Hitachi disconnectd, and proceeded to boot into windows.

This caused a CRASH. So I'm guessing there's an issue with the drive being treated like a normal internal drive.

I'm now moving on to investigating the jumper issue.

Thanks again, for anyone who can assist.

 

[rivermonster]

Found the jumpers on WD's support site, and set the drive for 1.5 PHY and Spread spectrum, and no dice. Same thing-shows up in windows 8 under the device manager, but doesn't map so that it's accessible.

Must be another trick to removing those from their external housings.

Close to out of options, so anyone who has some insight is appreciated.

- RM

 

[rclarke250]

Well, it seems that the My Book, encrypts data internally. You could have the drive as an internal drive, but you would need to partition the drive and this means you loose the data on the drive, or move the data off before mounting as an internal drive.

 

[rivermonster]

rclarke, you are correct sir!

By putting this crazy ass proprietary format disk in my machine, it corrupted the partition. I spent today morose and downtrodden as I thought I'd lost a LARGE amount of critical data (home movies, family photos, etc.)

LUCKILY--I found Test Disk (

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

) and was able to recover the entire drive, by hooking it back up to the enclosure, then with Test Disk I reset the partition to the correct value. This allowed instant access to all my data that I thought had been lost (I can't afford a drive recovery service).

So it turns out, I'm going to live with the hassle of an external drive, until this beast is fully backed up. At which point, as you mentioned, I'll format it properly and then be done with external nonsense.

Thanks for the quick reply, and hopefully my horrors and disasters will prevent other people from the same.

- RM