External Hard Drive won't initialize

Question

Hi there,

I am running Windows Vista SP2.

I have an external HD connected through a USB cable.

The HD is Western Digital WD 800 with 80 GB capacity.

When I plug the HD into the computer it starts installing the driver but it doesn't show in My Computer.

When I checked the Disk Management under Computer Management it showed that the HD is not initialized.

When I try to initialize it it gives me the error message "Incorrect Function".

Does anyone have any idea what to do?

Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

"The new hard drive cannot appear in Windows Explorer or My Computer,

nor can disk management assign it a drive letter, until it has been

partitioned and formatted. Right-click My Computer > Manage > Storage >

Disk Management. Create and format partition(s) on the second hard drive as

desired."

Cheers.

---

Mick Murphy - Microsoft Partner

Answer 2

Michael,, thanks for your response.

The HD is not new, it has data but for some reason it crashed and now am just trying to save my data.

How would you initialize a HD that won't do so??

Any idea?

Answer 3

I have the exact same problem.  I have two brand new WD external drives; I have two desktops, and one laptop.  I have an OLD desktop running XP that I can get the drives to initialize and work; but I am not using that anymore because I had to use the monitor for another desktop.  Anyway, I know the drives work just not on Vista SP1 or SP2.  So how do I get these drives to work in Vista?

Answer 4

Hi abdulrahman44,

Have you consider the fact that the drive just went bad already?

Try it on another system to see if it still usable. 

Looking forward to hear from you,

---

Kevin

Microsoft Answers Support Engineer

Visit our Microsoft Answers Feedback Forum and let us know what you think.

Answer 5

So,,, anyone please????? :(