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WD External Hard Drives not recoginized by Windows 8.1?

Discussion in 'Legacy Windows' started by Marv6, 2014/07/23.

  1. 2014/07/23
    Marv6 Lifetime Subscription

    Marv6 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    I have some WD external HDs that are not recognized by Windows 8.1? Is there a fix for this? This is why I hate to go to new operating systems as so many things that I already have don't want to work with the new systems.
     
  2. 2014/07/23
    Evan Omo

    Evan Omo Computer Support Technician Staff

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    Hi Marv6. Its possible that you need to format the drives first before you can use them. If you open Disk Management do the drives show up there?
     

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  4. 2014/07/23
    retiredlearner

    retiredlearner SuperGeek WindowsBBS Team Member

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  5. 2014/07/23
    Marv6 Lifetime Subscription

    Marv6 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Thanks for the information. I will look into this and see if it will help me get it to recognize the external hds.
     
  6. 2014/07/23
    Marv6 Lifetime Subscription

    Marv6 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Evan, no I don't see the external drive in disk management, but, I found some instructions on getting it to recognize the external drives, which I will try. I hope that I do not have to format the drive since they already have a lot of files on them that I do not want to lose! Thanks for the info.
     
  7. 2014/09/17
    demon

    demon Well-Known Member

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    connecting WD drive.

    Hi, I found the same problem when connecting a large unpowered WD drive , I cured this but getting a twin USB to a single USB cable and getting the power from 2 USB ports fixed the problem.
    Cheers Des.
     
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  8. 2014/09/17
    Marv6 Lifetime Subscription

    Marv6 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    Demon, thanks for the advise. Will try it and see what happens.
     
  9. 2014/10/31
    Marv6 Lifetime Subscription

    Marv6 Well-Known Member Thread Starter

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    I got the external HDs to work by buying a new computer with win 8.1. And, they now work just fine
     
  10. 2014/10/31
    Evan Omo

    Evan Omo Computer Support Technician Staff

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    Excellent. Thanks for posting back. :)
     

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