My HDD shows in Device Manager but not in Disk Management!

kelper said:

The disk is not initialised!

View attachment 173809

Right-click where I have circled and select initialise. Now it will appear with a drive letter. You can format it in Disk Management or in File Explorer.

Click to expand...

Yes i did that and doing the Initialize , at almost towards the end of its job, it show an error.
"The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"
How is this error showing itself.

supersonic said:

Yes i did that and doing the Initialize , at almost towards the end of its job, it show an error.
"The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"
How is this error showing itself.

Click to expand...

That is the same thing that happened to me. One time I bought a new 16TB WD Elements external HDD on Amazon. When I first connected it, it said it needed it needed to be initialized. That seemed strange but I let Disk Management try to initialize the drive. Unfortunately, there was an error trying to do that. I returned the drive for a refund.

MisterEd said:

That is the same thing that happened to me. One time I bought a new 16TB WD Elements external HDD on Amazon. When I first connected it, it said it needed it needed to be initialized. That seemed strange but I let Disk Management try to initialize the drive. Unfortunately, there was an error trying to do that. I returned the drive for a refund.

Click to expand...

yeah i think i'll do that too. File for a replacement. Lot of head ache and no joy, i'll definitely return this.

I never had such a large disk but it might be that they require more power than smaller capacity to properly work. Not sure how to give them more power. Use a higher wattage PSU? In any case they are either incompatible with your computer or faulty. Just return it for a replacement or refund. If you have that option, you can take your computer to the store service department and ask them to make it work, assuming it's not faulty.

supersonic said:

Yes i did that and doing the Initialize , at almost towards the end of its job, it show an error.
"The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error"
How is this error showing itself.

Click to expand...

Please post a screenshot of this error message in its entirety.

How is it connected to your computer?

Most likely causes (in your situation)
SATA power issue (very common even with new drives)
Enterprise 12TB drives are picky about stable power.

Check:
Use a direct PSU SATA power lead (not adapters, not splitters if possible)
Avoid daisy-chained SATA power connectors if the PSU is older
Ensure no loose connector fit

A marginal 12V rail will produce exactly your symptom: detection but instant I/O failure.

I paid $240 for the 16TB WD Elements external hard drive. I am glad I got a refund. A few weeks later I bought a 20TB WD Easystore external hard drive for $250 at Best Buy. It is still working fine after almost 18 months.

BTW, I just checked. Best Buy currently wants $815 for the 20TB WD Easystore external drive.

To help understand why I didn't hesitate to get a refund for the drive I have to talk about a bad experience I had back in 2014. Back then I bought a 2TB Seagate Expansion Desktop external hard drive from Newegg. After I got it I ran Seagate Seatools diagnostic software on. I failed all the basic tests. I returned it to Newegg for a replacement. The replacement also failed the diagnostic tests. I got the bright idea of doing an RMA with Seagate for a replacement. The replacement also failed the diagnostic tests. I gave up at that point since Windows didn't complain about any problems with it.

A few months ago the drive started randomly not connecting to one computer. I immediately backed up the 1.4TB of data on it. A couple days later the drives stopped responding. I had nothing to lose so I shucked the external drive. That means I cracked open the plastic enclosure and removed the hard drive. The drive inside was a 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM 3.5" hard drive. With the help of Diskpart I repartitioned and formatted it. When I tested this drive in another enclosure, it passed the Seagate Seatools diagnostic tests.

Looking back now I am wondering whether the original problem was caused by defective or marginal USB to SATA adapters inside the Seagate Expansion Desktop external hard drives. It is possible that Seagate was aware of it but kept quiet because the drives worked OK with Windows.

The problem was caused by a faulty SATA to USB enclosure. I have seen it before. If you don't care about Warranty, just remove the disk from the original enclosure and put it on a third-party enclosure.

Warning: WD external disks don't use standard SATA disks inside, the USB converter is soldered on the PCB, so you can't replace the faulty enclosure! Sucks...

spapakons said:

The problem was caused by a faulty SATA to USB enclosure. I have seen it before. If you don't care about Warranty, just remove the disk from the original enclosure and put it on a third-party enclosure.

Warning: WD external disks don't use standard SATA disks inside, the USB converter is soldered on the PCB, so you can't replace the faulty enclosure! Sucks...

Click to expand...

Yeah u were right. After sending the faulty one and got a replacement n tried the initialize disk and there was a problem there too. So again i requested for a replacement. And after receiving a new disk. I saw that in Disk Management the new drive wasn't shown. Although it did show up in Device Manager.
I took a real serious thought and found out that i was using a different USB Enclosure, the adapter was for the wrong device. I h' two: Oricho (China made) and QZ(Indian made). I was using a adapter belonging to Oricho in place of QZ. And as i connected it. BOOM. The initialize window just poped up. From there i didn't hesitate and did a quick format, FAST! Now its ok. I just copied 2 TB of data, it took 2 days.
Ohhh man, what a delay and how bother some is preserving ur data.

My suggestion to people who buy HDD online, make sure the seller is providing a replacement or refund.
Because chances of u receiving a faulty one is 4 out of 10 chances u'll receive it in a faulty condition. From now onwards i'll never buy HDD online.
I'll go to the market and through connection i'll get a new HDD.

@MisterEd: Its good u choose the Element one. I h' that too 4TG WD Element and although due to some reason it showed problems with it. Not the disk
but the pc that i was connected to had a real faulty USB 2.0 and when i had connected it. I dozed off and after half an hour the drive began to show problem. I though of fixing but how can i. I don't know what to do beyond opening case and fiddling with read/ write head.
But now that drive is still working and does the copy/paste job normally. Its still working, and i m thinking i'll get another 4TB Element for myself.
phheewwww...........Good day guys.

Backup over 500GB on an external USB disk can take a while even with a USB 3.0 one. That's why I don't do that often. I prefer to copy my most important data more frequently and do larger backups rarer.

spapakons said:

Backup over 500GB on an external USB disk can take a while even with a USB 3.0 one. That's why I don't do that often. I prefer to copy my most important data more frequently and do larger backups rarer.

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That is why I do automatic backups after midnight. Hopefully the backups are done when I check on them in the morning. I back up my desktops to USB connected hard drives. I back up my laptops over Wi-Fi to desktops with USB connected hard drives.

If you have a second PC you could put a large hard disk there, share it and do backups overnight on the shared folder over ethernet or Wi-Fi. An internal hard disk is safer than an external USB hard disk that can fail any time if the power fluctuates. This is to avoid buying a NAS which would be more expensive than buying a single large SATA disk.