Issue detecting external hard drive

[_pike]

I have an external hard drive (Western Digital Elements - 500GB, aproximately 2 years old), which is not recognized at all from a newly bougth ZBook 15 G3. When the disk is connected to the computer it spins up properly but apart from that I receive no other indication or message. I checked at the disk management of windows and I can't see the disk at all.

I faced the same issue while I was using linux with the same computer and still I could not see the drive entry at /dev or by running any hardware/disk detection command like lshw or fdisk.

Other removable media like usb sticks or external drives are working properly.

Initialy I thought that it was an issue of the disk, but when I tried it to 4 other computers running both linux and windows, it worked flawlessly.  Any ideas? Thanks in advance

[WAWood]

@_pike

Hello;

Allow me to welcome you to the HP forums!

Your comment about problems in Linux implies that this is one of the infamous PASSPORT drives that has the encryption front-end enabled.

I knew about this BEFORE I acquired my Passport drive, so when I first connected it, I disabled the front-end.  After that, I was able to see it OK in Windows and in Linux (e.g., Ubuntu and Linux Mint).

But, I did that BEFORE I used it, so I didn't have to worry about losing data.

My suggestion is that you check on the Western Digital forums about this problem.

Good Luck

[_pike]

Thanks for the reply.

I do not understand exactly how the front-end encryption feature affects the detection of the drive. I have connected the drive to many different computers running either linux or windows and it worked without any problem. I guess it is a ZBook issue.

I will address to western digital support as well

[_pike · Accepted solution]

Finally after many days I managed to find the solution through the WD community.

In order to detect the disk. someone must use a USB 2.0 cable and not the USB 3.0 one. Obviously it is related to the power supply of the disk, but still it doesn't make any sense since I would epxect from a new computer to detect the device regardless of the cable type...

[Rusty68]

I have a similar problem, but as I see it the connector with the 3.0 cable differs from the 2.0 . So how does that work?

Russ

[_pike]

Indeed the cables are different but the micro-B connectors are the same. You just connect your usb 2 micro-B to the corresponding port and you ignore the pins of the SuperSpeed component

[Rusty68]

I have 2.0 cables with Type A and B connectors. Looking at the USB 3.0 cables they appear to have different shaped connectors to version 2.0....Hope that clarifies the problem. 

[skriddles]

I plugged my external hard drive's USB connector into a USB hub that is 2.0, and is connected t my computer, rather than plugging the external drive's USB cable directly into my computer. Through the hub, it worked! My computer is an EliteDesk 800 G1, but has had the same issue, even before upgrading to Windows 10.

Many thanks to _pike for posting the problem AND the solution!