My computer got a virus with my external hard drive plugged in. I got my computer working again but when I plug in the external hard drive it shows that some of the memory is used but it won't bring anything up. I can't access any of it. What should I do?

Hi James,

I work at FixMeStick. Yes, you can scan an external hard drive using the FixMeStick. Just insert the external hard drive into your computer before you start a scan and keep it plugged in during the scan, and the FixMeStick will scan it in addition to your computer.

Best,
Naz

Could have picked up a virus from your friends computer, or the device is just on the fritz. It also could have been corrupted. When removing an external hard drive you should always go to the bottom right click on the little green arrow icon and select "safely remove <your device>" otherwise you risk corrupting the files on it. Plug in the hard drive to your computer. Right click on Computer/My Computer and select Manage. Click on Disk Management on the left side. If your device shows up then the drive most likely has corrupted files or the file table. Right click on your device and initialize it if it isn't and then format the device and it will work again. You will lose all your data in the process. You can download Recurva from piriform.com to try and recover your files if you like. If the device doesn't show at all in disk management then I'd say its toast.

It could be that the drive was infected by a virus. The Virus dumps an file with the name autorun.inf onto the drive and everytime u plug the drive into a pc - it wants to run the virus that autorun points to.

Try something - unplug the hard drive, then press the SHIFT key and while holding it, plug in your hard drive. DONT let go of the shift key until the drive has been detected (around 10 seconds should be find) then let go of the shift key - if the drive shows up under "my computer" DONT double click on it to open it as that will jsut run the virus again ... instead .. RIGHT click on the driver and choose explore. If you can see the drive this time - it is a virus and the best option is to remove the virus or format the drive - post another question if this does not work.

Good luck

disconnect your WD ext HDD. and reboot your computer. then connect again. if still not showing. go to device manager (right click my computer then properties -- click device manager). expand by clickin "Disk drives" category here it will show all the hard drives installed in your computer including your WD ext HDD . if you see yellow sign on your external drive right click and remove then go to Action menu click on Scan for hardware. it should detect and install the driver again. if still the same or maybe its not on the list of Disk drives.. try to change another USB cable .. i hope this will help

You could have a virus on your computer. Do a virus scan by going to nortan's website. There is no way around the virus, the only way is to format the drive, and reload windows.

u need to fix your external....it has a virus thats why!.....

Attach your external HD with some other computer, that will definitely appear normal, the problem is due to a virus in ur HD. Your computer's antivirus software stops it to appear. Back up your data on the other computer, format ur external HD, remove un-necessary files and run a virus scan to the files u copied from HD, Hope this will solve the problem, if not, let me know and tell me what would be the response on the other compuer

Does it show up when you open my computer? If not, try unplugging it and plug it back in. Then check my computer again, if its not listed then it has probably died. Check the WD website for warranty info. I see allot of problems with WD external drives. Be it a bad hard drive, control boards, and or faulty power supplies. If it does show up you should be able to scan it. Good luck.

It sounds like your hard drive is dead. If you have tried it on a different computer and it did the same thing then your drive isn't booting up and is probably bad.

hi there

have you tried looking at the device manager?
you can also try transfering it to different usb ports.

hope this helps