External HDD not working.

[Jeff_K]

Hey everyone.

My problem is that my external HDD is no longer coming up in the "Computer" window (I have Windows 7).

It is a Simple Drive External HDD I bought last year. It worked fine up until today. I had a bunch of old files on it I used on an old computer and I wanted to wipe it. So I download some software called Active Kill Disk which I used to wipe and kill (erase all data from) the HDD. Now it no longer shows up in the "Computer" window.

I went into Device Manager and it shows up as Hitachi HDP725050GLA360 in the Disk Drives section. I also read somewhere that maybe I just need to partition and format the drive. So I started to do that, but the HDD doesn't show up in "Disc Management".

Now I am completely lost and I would really love to use my external HDD again. Any ideas or solutions would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You,
Jeff K.

 

[Jeff_K]

Issue solved.

All I had to do was partition and format the HDD after using Active Kill Disk.
The way I solved it.
Used gParted Live CD, it's a Linux live CD for repairing Partitions.
Just booted the Live CD up,
Chose the HDD,
Chose partition parameters,
Partitioned to FAT32,
Viola it worked on my windows 7 computer lol.

If anyone has the same issue and reads this, I hope it helps you!

 

[MindoverMaster]

We all know what Gparted is

Why not format to NTFS?

Glad you got it sorted.