Why external My passport drive is showing up as Local disk?

[Manthan G]

I am having a particular issue to discuss with you all. Well I purchased WD Passport 1TB couple of months ago. When I connected my external drive with my PC it was displayed as local disk rather than that of removable disk. Also I am getting access denied messages when I am trying to access the same. Can you tell me what troubleshooting steps should be taken to overcome from above mentioned issue? Thanks a lot for further assistance.

[Vicky Woodley]

Before we begin with actual troubleshooting of the issue I wanted to know about operating system that you running on your computer. also checkout into Disk Management and see whether drive is displayed as bar. Tell me which file system is being used on external drive of yours. well to get into Disk Management you need to perform following steps.

First of all you should go to Desktop and look for My Computer icon, Right click on the same and click on Manage option of right click Menu. in resulting window you should click on Disk Management.

[Hymavath]

Normally Windows uses Local Disk label, while Windows is not able to get any volume label for hard drive partition. In case any partition of your hard drive is labeled as Local Disk than it does not implies that you are having major issue, until and unless different volume label assigned previously.

Same as you the external hard drive which I am using is displayed also as Local Disk since there was no volume label assigned in Windows explorer. As far as access denied message is concerned, mostly you will get such prompts when you make an attempt to access data on external drive which was used by previous version of Windows based operating system that you had installed on your computer. in previous version of windows if you had been used password then you should give a try to following steps.

• Simply right click on the desired folder and click on Properties. Properties window would show up on the screen. Over there look for security tab and click on the same. after that click on Advanced and click on Owner tab.
• After that click on Edit button and enter Administrator password if in case it ask for. Select the desire user name to whom you wanted to give ownership. Once you have done click on Ok button.

By doing the same you will get Ownership of data which you had stored on your external hard drive.

[Amadou]

Looking at the situation I recommend following steps that you should try and let me know whether it worked for you or not.

• Right click on My Computer icon and click on Manage.
• From Computer Management window you have to click on Device Manager.
• Here you should right click on your external drive and click on Properties. From Properties Window you should click on Polices and simply click on Quick Removal option.
• Click on Apply and Ok button and close all the Windows opened.

[Dabert]

I am having a particular issue to discuss with you all. Well I purchased WD Passport 1TB couple of months ago. When I connected my external drive with my PC it was displayed as local disk rather than that of removable disk. Also I am getting access denied messages when I am trying to access the same. Can you tell me what troubleshooting steps should be taken to overcome from above mentioned issue? Thanks a lot for further assistance.

As you are getting your external hard drive as local disk it means that Windows had enabled write caching on it. So you are not going to an option that allow you to Safely remove hard drive when drive is connected with your system. hence you are at risk of lose data from drive.