hard drive help

i converted my wd my book essential external hd 1tb into an internal drive i can see it in device manager and disk management but i cant see it from my computer i dont want to reformat because i have a lot of data stored on the disk

 

In Disk Management does it show as NTFS? Does the free and used space look correct? Does it have a drive letter assigned?

 

it has a drive letter which is L but when i clicl on l in my computer it says it has to be formatted

 

Try Partition Wizard to see what it says about the drive.

Install and run the program.
Click on the Disk number of the HD. Not the partition but the HD/Disk itself. Then choose Partition Recovery from the left pane.
Run the Full disk and the Quick scan options.
It should list your partition. Check the size of used/unused space to see if it looks how you remember. Double click the partition to Explore and see that all your files are there.

If all that is OK then click Finish.
In the main PW window click the Apply button to finalize results. (Don't hit Apply if you are unsure or want to quit the program.)
Windows should now see the files if you have applied the change.

I've done this several times on different HD it is safe as you are only rewriting the table that exists but Windows refuses to see.

Forgot a look at the steps: http://www.partitionwizard.com/help/partition-recovery.html

 

thanks gonna give it a try

 

Definitely worth a shot. If you are unsure at any step please ask.

There will probably only be one partition in the list but if there are more let me know. You want to select all of them if there are more than one as long as the sizes make sense and you know they should exist.

Assuming just one--double click to explore and browse to see that your files are listed.
If in doubt don't hit Apply but ask for advice.

 

Wait, it's probably encrypted/compressed by the WD software that auto-installs on first connection

Is the external case still usable? How much data is on the WD drive? How much free space do you have on your main drive(s)?