My external western digital hard disk (the green series which is used for storage only) is disconnected ferquently- when I restart the computer, it appers together with my major hard disk, but it is disconnected at some point later, sometimes few minutes later and sometimes two days later. I have the INTEL H61 motherboard. I tried to download all updated versios of it and still the problem was not solved. what is the problem? is the hard disk broken?

If you are using a usb hub disconnect it completely and try connecting your Western Digital directly to a usb port on your laptop. If that doesn't work try booting into safe mode and see if it shows up then. If it works in safe mode a recent update to your virus program or another program could be blocking it. Hope I was of some help , Thanks for using FixYa

Shut your computer down. Plug the external drive back in, restart the computer and it should be there.

Try out the hard drive on another computer, to verify if it's a hard drive issue or a computer issue. Then, get another hard drive, or USB stick, and try reading/erasing/recording on it from your MAC, to see if the computer is handling external data storage devices properly.
I'm not a MAC guy so I can't help out if it's your computer that's misbehaving... but if it's the hard drive that's misbehaving, then you may want to run a partition repair scan and also run a surface-level scan to make sure everything's ok. If you have a PC near by, get the WD Diagnostic utility here http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/Hard-Disk-Utils/Western-Digital-Data-Lifeguard-Diagnostics.shtml and run an extended disk test. This will find and repair any logical problems with the hard drive. After the test is over, run a SMART scan too, that will tell you the physical state of the hard drive. If it points to some parameters that are off the recomended values you may want to get all the data off the drive. I'm sorry to say, but the 500GB-1TB Western Digital hard drives, especially the Green Line series, proved to be a very silky line, fragile, unreliable.
If you opt for a new hard drive, I suggest that you keep the WD casing, and stick a Samsung or a Seagate hard drive.

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Any external disk-drive as small as 80GB is probably "out-of-warranty" -- it's likely that the disk-drive inside the enclosure has "died".

You have two options, not mutually exclusive:
* exercise the Western Digital "Customer Loyalty" program -- find the serial-number of your Passport, and access WD's web-site to buy a new Passport, citing the old serial-number to qualify for a significant discount on your purchase;
* open the enclosure, disconnect the disk-drive from the USB-to-disk-drive adapter, buy a new, compatible, disk-drive, and connect it to the USB-to-disk-drive adapter, to "frankenstein" it, creating a "new" external storage-device.

Try connecting it to a different computer.

Any external storage device has three major parts:
* USB cable
* disk-drive
* USB-to-disk-drive adapter

Try a different USB cable.

Disconnect the disk-drive from that adapter, and connect the disk-drive as a "slave" disk-drive in a desktop computer, and see if you can read the files, which implies that the adapter is the part that has failed.

If you cannot read from the disk-drive, check its WARRANTY status. W.D. will replace it, if the warranty is still valid.

Otherwise, W.D. has a "Customer Loyalty" program: find the serial-number of your unit, access their web-site, and purchase another W.D. external storage unit, at a significant discount, by citing the serial-number.

Or, if the adapter is OK, then replace the disk-drive by a new one, and close-up the casing, to create a "revived" external storage device for your use.

Hello,

Unplugging the CDROM didn't cause this issue but installing the western digital on that cable did cause your drive numbers to change in BIOS. You need to disconnect the external hard drive from the SATA cable but leave the power connected,then boot windows. Once booted reconnect the SATA cable. Check and see if it shows up in your disk management utility.

To do this, right click on computer, then left click manage. When the management console opens, click Disk Management on the left side and scroll down through your drives. Let me know if it shows up and what it says about the partition on the right, I'll keep my eyes open for your reply.

Chris

Just restart your computer, and disconnect the MyBook as your computer _starts_ to reboot.

I have a WD3200 usb Hard drive. I am looking to partition it. The problem i encountered is when I go to the disk management, the drive shows up as disk one but below it , it says no media. its like the computer knows that there is an external storage device attatched but cannot access it. Also if I try to get into the disk from my computer, it says "insert disk"

Any suggestions?

-Oliver Fernandes

If you are using a pre-Windows xp system you may need to install specific drivers for your HD. If you run xp or Vista Try disconnecting completely the power cable from your computer for five minutes and then plug it back to the power and restart it. I know it sounds weird, but sometimes usb mass storage devices suffer troubles caused by electrostatic charges.