Hi All, For some unknown reason, a few days ago my external 2T USB HDD started showing as a local drive in my computer instead of removable. Everything works fine, the aggravation comes when I remove it. Used to be able to plug/unplug at will with no problem. Now if I pull it without doing the "safely remove hardware", I have to reboot to get it back online. And yes, "quick removal" remains checked as it always has. Russ
Are you using western digital's tools or cloud software? Some people have had success by disabling the Distribute Link Tracking service and disabling indexing service on that drive and cloud syncing. if cloud service is setup or a virus then the connected drive is always being checked for "sync" to some wretched cloud service and it my not allow usb software release right away. I have windows 10 now but when I had windows 8.1 I had to disable indexing options in control panel other wise windows would not release it because it was still being used by indexing always checking the drive for changes to update the search index. Good luck I hope you find your fix.
No cloud stuff here, I'm way old-school. Whenever I buy a new drive, I always reformat and never use any of the mfg'er's "tools", just Windows' built in stuff. Looks like somehow a "bit" got flipped and I'm nor sure where to find it to reset it... Russ
I've checked and rechecked that box, but never thought about rebooting, something new to try. I've been leery of uninstalling the driver, last resort! Not sure what you mean, my volumes properties page looks the same as yours except for the system reserved partition which mine does not have. Again, this just started a few days ago after several years of uninterrupted success. Something caused a "flipped bit" and I don't know why... Russ
This drive is an "clone" of my Windows 7 in case something goes south with my current drive... and all I have to do is pop this drive in and I am back up and running again. So the reserved partition is part of my windows 7 boot files
You should be able to uninstall the device via the device manager, You should get a pop up box that asks if you want to uninstall the drivers... You must click on "NO" and reboot. That will uninstall the usb device and reinstall the drivers upon reboot. If you want to re-install the existing or new drivers drivers then download the proper drivers (usually chipset drivers) first and install after a reboot
OK this is getting weird. I flipped the "quick removal / better performance" bit, rebooting each time. No change. I uninstalled all drivers related to this drive (USB, mass storage, WD SES), no change. I noticed there's some confusion on my 'puter's part as to which drive it's dealing with. The drive in question is called WD MyPassport, while "devices and printers" shows it as FreeAgent Passport. Even after I deleted all my removable HDDs from d&p before rebooting. Another, older HDD I have somewhere and haven't connected in awhile, even the icon is wrong. I did see a BIOS buggar on one of my reboots, it shows my HDD password as "frozen". Never seen this before, did some Googling and it may be a sign of a corrupt BIOS. I may try reloading it and see what happens... Russ
From what I know, the "Frozen" is not a bug, it's a feature. There is Malware in the wild setting or changing HDD passwords (Ransomware). Thus, ATA Security commands concerning HDD password protection are frozen by most BIOS/UEFI. Malware cannot change it, that way. The HDD0 password feature is usually available when cold-booting (turning completely off, then on again and immediately entering BIOS).
I had some problems to "eject" WD Passport from system, (WD My Passport, WD SES Driver and Windows 7). When I installed Windows 10 everything works fine without any problems ...
That ain't gonna happen. I already have a Win7 VHD set up for whatever OS my next 'puter comes with. I've been playing with a Raspberry PI for awhile, maybe it'ill be a Linux system. Not really (yet). All I've tried is the hard power-off (s/d, remove battery, hold power switch for 30 secs) similar to what's mentioned by Carlos D which works for one boot cycle, then it's back. Hmmm, I need to check with Malwarebytes about this. Maybe their last update triggered it. The timing would be about right. The latest BIOS update occurred before I bought the 'puter and BIOS is not something I do much tinkering with... Russ
Another bit of strangeness: after every Win boot up, I get a "this copy of Windows not registered" in the lower RH corner of the desktop. Just started a few days ago. If I right-click on my computer, then select properties and scroll down to the activation pane, it suddenly shows registered and the desktop overlay message clears. BTW, I always load Sysinternals "Process Explorer" & "TCPView" and watch all my processes for unknowns and unsigneds so I have a pretty good idea of what's supposed to be there. Nothing's changed as far as programs running unless someone has the capability of faking a checksum. I feel pretty safe using ZoneAlarm, Malwarebytes Pro, a VPN, and watching my system with the above viewers... Russ
My C: drive has a few known bad sectors, the P: removable is fine. BTW, I could find zero info Googling frozen bios password AND Malwarebytes. Guessing they're not related... Russ
Try to assign a different letter for this drive and check if it stilll shows as local. Am not sure if this will help, but worth trying out. Win7 behaves differently for WD drives, no matter what. I have had issues with WD drives and removing the driver made Win7 fail to even recognize the drive, so had to revert back to earlier state to atleast make it work.
Usually it's the drive controller's choice how to represent the drive to the OS. Some things might only work with local drives, and that way, you can emulate one. You could even have a USB stick or SD card presented to the OS as local hard disk. Assigning a different letter might not work, as device configuration is stored by the OS under the device's hardware vendor string. Example: Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\USBSTOR for USB devices and Registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\SCSI for local ones.
Carlos, thanks for the info on "frozen". I'm no longer concerned about it other than how/when it happened without me knowing... As suspected, changing the drive letter didn't help. I turned off the drive's "indexing" thinking it might, but got some index deletion errors so it prolly won't do anything even though the checkbox is now cleared. Also disabled the WD SES driver, haven't rebooted yet but no change so far. I'm not overly concerned about it no longer being seen as a removable drive, but I am concerned with not knowing the how/why of it. This (not having a logical explanation) is one part of getting old that causes me great amounts of frustration! Russ