I have a Dell Dimension 4400 running WinXP Home. The passport drive I purchased to use as an external drive for backups is not recognized by my computer. According to the Quick Start guide, when the drive is connected to the computer, drive utilities are installed automatically. When I plugged it in nothing happened, although I was able to format the drive into 4 NTFS partitions in Disk Management. When I did that presumably whatever software came with the drive was lost.

When plugged in, the drive is listed in Disk Management as disk 2 (I have two internal hard drives) and it shows up in Device Manager as "USB Mass Storage Device" but it is not listed in "My Computer" nor is it listed in Windows Explorer so there is no way I can write to it. Western Digital suggested that there might not be enough power going to the USB ports on my computer to run the drive so I purchased a power booster cable which enabled me to plug into two USB ports with the same cable. As the USB ports on my computer are either 1.0 or 1.1, I also purchased a PCI card with USB 2.0 ports and used them but no success there either.

When I plugged the drive into my neighbor's computer it worked fine, so apparently the cables and the drive are OK. I also borrowed a self-powered hub with four 2.0 USB ports and tried that without any success. Western Digital also suggested writing zeros to the drive and then try partitioning it again. I did that and then formatted and partitioned the drive, but that didn’t change anything.

I have posted this problem on several other user forums as well as posting it on Experts Exchange where I have had good results in the past. I also contacted WD tech support (poor) and Dell tech support (also poor). One of the things suggested by WD was to be sure I have the latest BIOS updates. I have never updated my BIOS. Is that risky? So far no one has been of help. Is there anyone here who wants to be a “hero”?

HI welcome to PCHF this could be a number of things can you check somthing for me is sounds like the PC see's the pen drive but occasionally windows will assign it a drive letter that is already taken. Can you try this to change the drive letter if it appears in the Disk Management to correct it.

How to change a drive letter

To change an existing drive letter on a drive, on a partition, or on a volume, follow these steps: 1.Log on as Administrator or as a member of the Administrators group.2.Click Start, click Control Panel. 3.Click Administrative Tools, double-click Computer Management, and then click Disk Management in the left pane.4.Right-click the drive, the partition, the logical drive, or the volume that you want to assign a drive letter to, and then click Change Drive Letter and Paths.5.Click Change.6.Click Assign the following drive letter if it is not already selected, click the drive letter that you want to use, and then click OK. 7.Click Yes when you are prompted to confirm the drive letter change.

When I originally partitioned the drive into four NTFS partitions, each was assigned a drive letter - J, K, L & M. After writitng zeros and formatting the drive again, I left it with just one large partition with the drive letter J. I already have drives A, C, D, E, F, G, H & I (my CD/RW drive) so Windows was not assigning a duplicate drive letter. Just for kicks, I changed the current J to N. It made no difference.

Here's some thing to try go into device manager and uninstall USB related devices. Shut down the PC remove all USB devices and plugin the pen drive and power on the PC it will reinstall your usb drivers and hopefull correct the problem.

I tried uninstalling all the USB stuff, disconnecting and re-booting with the Passport drive installed. Didn't help as I still can't access the drive through Explorer or My Computer.

I have had a look around there is a format utility for the drive have you used it to format the drive?
http://support.wdc.com/download/external/ExtFat32.msi
Also sync software here may need to be installed
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