# External Hard Drive will not initialize



## sup2jzgte

I have a Western Digital WD 500 External hard drive that I can not get to show up in MY COMPUTER.  THe issue is according to Western Digital these hard drives will not work for Vista 64..................that is hard to believe honestly, but who knows.  Anyone have any ideas how I can get this to work?

It shows up in Device Manager and Disk Manager, but not in MY COMPUTER.  When I try to format it from Disk Manager I get an error saying that the drive has not been initialized and it is unallocated.  I have tried all 8 of my USB ports, pulled the hard drive out and hooked up with a few different adapters and even tried going directly to the mobo and nothing works.

The model number in the hard drive is WD5000YS


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## Cromewell

> It shows up in Device Manager and Disk Manager, but not in MY COMPUTER. When I try to format it from Disk Manager I get an error saying that the drive has not been initialized and it is unallocated. I have tried all 8 of my USB ports, pulled the hard drive out and hooked up with a few different adapters and even tried going directly to the mobo and nothing works.


This may be a silly question but what if you pick Initialize before you try to format?


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## sync

If WD say those particular hard drives don't work with vista, why do you find that hard to believe?

*EDIT*

Just found this link on microsofts website, apparently it's supposed to be compatible. Allthough the model number is showing up as an internal hard drive and not an external one. But maybe that picture is just for display purposes?


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## sup2jzgte

FINALLY................I had to use the software from my World Book to get Vista to see the older drive.  Thanks for the help everyone


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