WD My Book not Showing up in Windows 10: Guide

When you connect your WD My Book external hard drive to your PC or laptop, Windows OS will tell you that the external hard drive is connected. If the WD My Book is not displayed in Windows 10 or cannot be recognised, something must be wrong. What causes this problem in Windows 10? To diagnose problems with the WD My Book, read the following information:

• Damaged cable or USB port. If the USB port or USB cable on your computer or laptop is faulty, the WD My Book will not be recognised successfully.
• Outdated Driver. If the Windows operating system driver for communicating with the external hard drive is out of date, the WD My Book will not be displayed.
• Wrong file system. If your WD external hard drive uses the HFS+ file system, Windows cannot recognise your hard drive.
• Corrupted hard drive. If your external hard drive displays error messages such as ‘You need to format this disk before using it’, the hard drive may have bad sectors or be damaged.
• Physical damaged. If the external hard drive now showingupin File Explorer, it may be physically damaged.

Once you know the cause of the problem, you can read the next section to avoid data loss.

Solve WD My Book problem without losing data

We'll show you how to fix the WD My Book problem in Windows 10 without losing data. The first method is to rescue the data from the external hard drive before trying all the possible solutions.

Data loss can already occur when WD My Book is suddenly no longer displayed or recognized in Windows 10. Download and install MyRecover. It will help you recover lost data from various storage devices in any situation.

• Recover data from WD external hard drive with its formats/filenames/directories.
• Apply in case of various data loss situations, accidental deletion, hard disk formatting, virus attack, system crash, etc.
• Restore recognises over 200 types of data, images, videos, audios, texts, documents, etc....
• Scan and recognizes data with very fast speed and high recovery rate.

Step 1. Run the program > connect an external WD hard drive to your computer > hover your mouse over the disk and click Scan.

Step 2. Search for the files you want using filters: type, size, path, etc.

Step 3. Select the desired data > Recover x files.

With this tool, recovering permanently deleted files from Windows 11/10/8/7 is also very easy.

WD My Book not showing up in Windows 10 - 6 ways to fix the problem

If you don't want to rely on professional experts, you can try to fix the WD external hard drive not showing up yourself. Here are six possible solutions. You can try them one by one:

1. Solve cable/connection problems.

If the WD My Book external hard drive cannot be read by Windows 10, you need to fix hardware issues first. How can you determine if your cable or USB port is working properly? Check the following tips:

Make sure both ends of the cable between your computer and the WD My Book are properly connected.

⭐Replace the other cable and try reconnecting the WD drive.

⭐Check the USB port and clean it of dust, debris and water.

⭐Install another external storage device to check if the problem is with the WD My Book external hard drive.

2. Update the drivers for the WD hard drive.

If you find that you have not downloaded the drivers for your WD My Book, go to the official Western Digital website to install the drivers. After installing the drivers, it is also important to update the drivers. We will show you how to update your Windows 10 driver:

Step 1. Quickly open Windows 10 Device Manager from the search bar.

Step 2. Scroll down to the WD driver in Windows 10 and right-click on it. Select ‘Update driver’.

Step 3: A driver update wizard window will appear and you can select ‘Search automatically for updated driver software’. Follow the instructions and your driver will be updated.

3. run hardware and device troubleshooting.

Windows Hardware and Device Troubleshooter will automatically help you troubleshoot your WD My Book. In addition to external hard drives, this built-in utility can also detect and repair keyboards, printers, USB ports and network adapters. Let's look at the detailed instructions:

Step 1. Click "Start" > "Settings" to open the "Windows Settings" window.

Step 2. Click "Update and Security" > "Troubleshoot".

Step 3.Choose "Find and fix other problems" and run the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter to fix the hard drive not showing up.

4. Assign a new drive letter to WD My Book.

The WD My Book's drive letter may conflict with other external storage devices or internal hard drives. Avoid assigning a drive letter such as C or D to an external hard drive. How can you change the drive letter? Here is a guide:

Step 1. Right-click on the Windows Start icon and select "Disk Management".

Step 2. Right-click on the volume or disk and then click "Change drive letters and paths..."

Step 3. Click "Change" to assign a new drive letter to your WD My Book external hard drive. Don't forget to click "OK" to save your changes.

5. Initialising your WD My Book external hard drive

If you have recently purchased an external storage device from Western Digital and Windows 10 does not recognise the device the first time. This may be because your external hard drive has not yet been initialised. Let's take a look at how to initialise the WD My Book in Windows 10:

Step 1: Open Disk Management using the same method as described above.

Step 2: Locate your WD My Book external hard drive, right-click on it and select ‘Initialise Disk’.

Step 3: Select the partition style for your external hard drive. Both MBR and GPT are supported.

6. Format WD My Book

Here is the last solution to fix WD My Book not showing Windows 10. Check the file system of your external hard drive and format it with the file system supported by Windows. You do not need to download any professional software. Just follow the instructions below:

Step 1: Open Windows 10 Disk Management.

Step 2: In Disk Management, right-click on WD My Book and select ‘Format...’.

Step 3: Deactivate the ‘Perform quick format’ checkbox to ensure that the data is completely deleted. Now confirm the formatting warning and click ‘OK’ to start formatting the external WD hard drive.

Summary

Remember that you should back up your WD My Book external hard drive regularly in case a hard drive failure occurs and you lose data or need to format the device. What should you do if you have lost data on your WD hard drive? MyRecover, as a Western Digital recovery software, is the perfect solution to your data loss problem!