Summary
Don’t worry if your Western Digital(WD) external hard drive suddenly stops working or cannot be recognized by your PC while the light is blinking. Download EaseUS hard drive recovery software and follow these quick fixes and effective methods to effectively fix this WD error without losing any data.
OverviewWD external hard drive not recognized but the light is on
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'It seems that my WD 1TB external hard drive cannot be recognized on my PC but the light is on. The flashlight of WD external hard drive continuously blinking when I connect the drive with USB cable. But the problem is that the WD hard drive still not working when I connect it to a new USB cable with the PC. Nothing is detected. Do you know how to make the WD external hard drive to show up and work again? And how to restore the saved data on the drive?'
If your WD external hard drive or USB drive etc is having a similar problem with the light on but not detectable by your PC, don't worry. Just follow the following quick fixes and effective methods to restore a non-working/unrecognized WD external hard drive and get all the lost data back right now.
Quick FixesWD external hard drive light on but not recognized
Here you have three options to quickly fix, and repair WD external hard drive with the 'light on but not recognized' error:
1. Change USB port/cable to detect WD external hard drive
If the WD external hard drive cannot be detected or fails to show up in your PC, please change the USB port (You may try to connect the external hard drive to the motherboard), or connect it with another new USB cable to see whether it shows up in the PC.
2. Remove and clean up the virus that blocks/stops WD external hard drive from working
When the computer or WD external hard drive gets infected by virus or malware, you may not be able to access saved data or even open the drive in PC.
Use anti-virus software or CMD to remove the virus or malware on your PC or WD external hard drive first.
Use anti-virus software or CMD to remove the virus or malware on your PC or WD external hard drive first.
3. Turn on USB Root Hub to make WD external hard drive recognizable
- Click Start > Type: devmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
- Open Device Manager > Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers.
- Right-click USB Root Hub > Click Properties > Power Management.
- Uncheck Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.
Repeat this process to turn on all USB Root Hubs in the list and reboot the PC to see if the WD external hard drive shows up on your PC.
Advanced FixesWD external hard drive light on but not recognized
To fix a 'WD external hard drive not detected, recognized or not working but light on' issue without losing any data, please don't format your drive and follow these steps to solve your problem:
1. Make unrecognized WD external hard drive detectable in PC
Here, you have two options to try to make the WD external hard drive detectable on your PC:
Option 1. Change drive letter to make WD external hard drive show up
1. Right-click on This PC > Manage > Disk Management.
2. Find and right-click the WD external hard drive > Select Change drive letter and path...
3. Assign a new drive letter to your WD external hard drive and save all changes.
Then you should now be able to see the WD external hard drive on your PC now.
Option 2. Show all hidden devices to make WD external hard drive recognized by the PC
1. Click on Start > Type: devmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
2. Click View in the device manager > Select Show hidden devices.
3. Expand all notes by clicking on + (plus)symbol.
4. If there are any grayed entries, right-click them and select Uninstall.
5. Reboot and try again.
2. Restore data from WD not working external hard drive with the light on
After making an unrecognized WD external hard drive detectable in your PC, the next step is to restore all saved data. If you have valuable data saved on your WD drive, just download EaseUS hard drive recovery software to get all data back with a few simple clicks:
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Step 1. Choose the external hard drive
Since you're going to recover data from the external hard drive, run EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and under the External Devices tab, choose the exact drive where you lost data. Click Scan.
Step 2. Scan for lost data
The software will start immediately to scan all over the selected drive for all lost data. During the scan, you could see more and more data showing up in the results.
Step 3. Preview and recover data
After the scan is over, check the scan results for the desired data. You can preview the file by double-clicking on it. Click Recover and choose another location to save the recovered data.
3. Repair and fix the light on but not working/unrecognized WD external hard drive
After getting all lost data back, you can follow these steps to repair the non-working WD external hard drive by then:.
Method 1. Uninstall hard drive driver to repair the non-detectable WD external hard drive
1. Click on Start > Type: devmgmt.msc and hit Enter to open Device Manager.
2. Expand Universal Serial Universal Serial Bus controllers > Right-click every USB device found there and select Uninstall.
3. Check out whether any device shows up as unrecognized or not:
- If the WD external hard drive shows as unrecognized, go to the driver's tab and delete/uninstall the driver. Then check out whether the external hard drive shows up in My Computer/My PC or not.
- If it doesn't show up, reboot or restart the PC.
- If it shows up but disappears later, repeat the above steps and go to Disk Management, change the drive letter and reconnect PC again.
Method 2. Change registry and format to repair WD external hard drive not recognized/working error
1. Click on Start > Type: regedt32 > Click OK.
2. BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY by going to file and click Export.
3. On the left side, go to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetControlClass{4D36E967-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
4. If you see any upper filter or lower filters on the right side, delete them.
5. Then retry your external hard drive again.
Method 3. Format to repair/reset WD external hard drive
1. Connect the WD external hard drive to your PC > Right-click on This PC > Manage > Disk Management.
2. Find and right-click on WD external hard drive > Select Format volume...
3. Reset the WD external hard drive letter and file system (NTFS) and save all changes.
After this, reboot your PC and reconnect the WD external hard drive to the PC. You should be able to use your WD external hard drive to backup files and save data again.
When I bought the WD My Passport Ultra drive, I was surprised to see that it didn’t support OS X out of the box. Yes, it had some software specifically made for OS X on it, but even that didn’t help. Turns out, it just wasn’t in the right format. These hard drives are customized to run well on Windows (as you’d expect), and they don’t run well with OS X.
So to get it running, what we’ll need to do is format it in Journaled format, which is OS X only format or MS-DOS (FAT), which means it will run with both OS X and Windows. If you’re only going to be using the hard drive on a Mac, I recommend you stick with Journaled.
Why You Need to Re-Format the External Hard Drive
When I first got the hard drive, I wasn’t able to copy anything over to it (but I was able to copy from it). Disk Utility showed that it was formatted to MS-DOS (FAT) but I’m pretty sure it would have been NTFS instead. If you experience the same issue, your only recourse is to reformat it in one of two formats.
If you’re only going to use the external hard drive with Macs or you want to use it for Time Machine backups, format it in Mac OS Extended (Journaled). If you’re like me who also needs to use at least a part of the hard drive from Windows PCs, you’ll need to choose MS-DOS (FAT) format. But here you won’t get great support for Time Machine. Plus you can’t make partitions bigger than 2 TB or move files larger than 4 GB around.
How to Re-Format the External Hard Drive
First, connect the external hard drive, bring up Spotlight Search by using the keyboard shortcut Cmd + Space and type in Disk Utility. Press Enter and Disk Utility will launch. You can also find it in Utilities folder in Applications.
Now, from the left column select 1 TB WD My Passport (or whatever your hard drive name is), and click on the Erase tab.
From here, in Format, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled), give it a name if you want, and click Erase.
You’ll get a warning. Again, click Erase.
In a couple of seconds, you’ll have an OS X ready hard drive to go.
Related: Check out our Ultimate Guide to OS X Yosemite.How to Create Partitions
I’m planning on using my hard drive for both Time Machine backups and to carry media files around. I might need to use the hard drive with Windows computers so I’m going to format one of the partitions as MS-DOS (FAT), fully aware of its limitations. The other one, for Time Machine backups, will be in Mac OS Extended (Journaled) format.
To create a partition, select the hard drive from the left column and click the Partition tab.
From the drop-down below Partition Layout, select the number of partitions you want. Don’t go overboard here.
Now, just below, you’ll see a visual representation of the partitions. You can use the breakpoint to change the size of the partitions by moving it up or down. You can also click on a partition, give it a name and select the format.
Once you’ve decided all the details, simply click the Apply button. From the pop-up, select Partition.
Disk Utility: Check out the two tips for using Disk Utility and 8 ways to free up space on your Mac.Wd Elements Mac Reformat
What Do You Use It For?
What are you planning on doing with the external hard drive? Time Machine backups perhaps? Or just storing media? Share with us in our forums section.
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#backup #hard disk
Did You Know
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DVD stands for Digital Versatile Disc.