Windows 7 External HDD not working

[hagg]

I recently bought a maxtor 500 gb external hdd and i just cant get it to work with windows 7, i got a computer at home where i want to keep it that has windows 7 rc , I have tryed everything i can think of to make it work but nothing does, I cant see it in my computer or with the explorer, but I can see it with computer management, It doesn´t have a drive letter or NTFS and I just cant do anything to it, I cant format it then I get the error

"An unexpected error has occured. check the system event log for more information on the error. Close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer".

Nothing works, I cant put a drive letter to it then i get the error

"The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console then restart Disk Management or restart the computer."

Now im getting pretty annoyed with trying different things on it but can´t seem to make it work, now on the other hand it does work on my laptop computer wich has Windows vista, and it works fine, also works on another computer I have that has Windows XP, can anyone please help me with this problem I would prefer to not have to format it since I did put alot of data on it from my other computers but if I have to then so be it .

 

[Stern77]

Seems like I have the same problem.

I'm pretty sure it is a windows problem because I can access the drive with the same computer including all hardware when I use programs for data recovery which bypass the way how windows provides access to the hard disk.

In my case I have an external hard drive connected to my Windows 7 computer and no matter if I have it connected via USB 2.0 or eSATA no drive letter shows up. When I try to format it in "Disk Management" the following error occurs: "An unexpected error has occurred. Check the System Event Log for more information on the error. Close the Disk Management console, then restart Disk Management or restart the computer."

In the System Event Log I cannot find anything related to this.

Not that I think it is important to mention because the hardware seems to work fine on a different OS or a data recovery tool which doesn't use my Windows7 device drivers but I can tell you: it is a western digital hard disk working in it (WD10EARS) and the frame in which it is operated is called (MD 90129), from the Medion HDDrive2Go series (Medion is a German company which provides a lot of hardware to the low cost shop called Aldi).

Is there anybody who would be so kind to tell us how this problem can be solved?

 

[Joe S]

When you try to format the drive delete the partition/volume first.
Joe

 

[Stern77]

When you try to format the drive delete the partition/volume first.
Joe

I'm sure it doesn't have to do with the hard disk's format, so I dont need to reformat it actually. I already changed it's format from FAT32 to NTFS and with the disk recovery tool mentioned above I could even create a folder and when I attached the drive to a another computer which has Windows XP on it I could even see that folder. Only my Windows 7 configuration seems to be messed up but reinstalling Windows 7 should be the last option when everything else fails...

The point to work on is to solve the error shown in device manager: I get an exclamation mark next to "unknown device" which is under "other devices".
Again: It has not to do with a USB or eSATA cable which is either defect or too long because I can access the drive using my recovery tool on that computer (where the recovery tool probably doesn't use windows' driver but installs its own driver to work independently).

Still looking for the answer...