WD hard drive, almost brand new, not showing up in my computer all of a sudden

it was working fine this morning, and i'd left my computer copying files on to it all day, and when i got back to it just now it started telling me that this hard drive doesn't exist.. it had it as g:, and i have another one plugged in now called f: (which is showing up okay), and my computer's hard drive is split in two, c and d, so it's not a name confusion thing.. just stopped working all of a sudden, even its little light isn't lighting up.. .. i managed to use it fine once before, to copy files on to (needed to do that so i didn't lose everything when i wiped my computer's hd, for another reason (most stubborn virus i've ever met)).. .. so what should i do now? is my stuff still salvagable?
 
Is it an external hdd? You could start Disk Management (press start, and run diskmgmt.msc). If your hdd shows up there you can right click and assign a new drive letter.
You can also try to connect it to another computer.

Sadly it's also possible that your hard drive just died, even if it's new. In that case you should return it to wherever you bought it and get a replacement, but your data could be difficult to recover (maybe it's possible, but very expensive). One of my Transcend external drives stopped working after only a few weeks :(
 
If this is external usb drive then step 1: unplug and replug (and try different sockets)
step 2: check device manager see if listed perhaps with flag If not in DM prob wont be in Disk management either. Step 4: see if listed in BIOS step 5: if you have access to another PC see if that recognises it. If it doesn't >> drive no good!
 
unplugged and replugged, and there it is again.. it had completely disappeared, wasn't in disk management, then suddenly it's there again.. any ideas why that might have happened?- i mean, why it would have disappeared like that
 
Probably the little green men inside your computer playing you a trick :p

Actually a lot of strange problems can be solved with a simple reboot, or in your case unplug and replug. Other than that I have no idea as to what could be the reason for your problems. Maybe a loose USB cable.

Glad it works again :)
 
that's what i thought it must have been at first, loose USB plug, so i pulled that out and put it back, nothing, then i unplugged and replugged the drive at the wall, nothing, went off to do something, put a message up here, plugged it in again and it worked fine.. so yea, probably was just the gremlins, doesn't look as if there's anything actually wrong with anything .. .. and thanks for that, capn, i'll save that for future reference
 
Be nice to yourself and back up any important or irreplaceable data on that drive, asap.
Such intermittent BIOS or management software recognition of a drive could be as simple as a poorly inserted cable, or it could be the beginning of the end for that drive. That unpredictability makes a swift data backup mandatory.
If the issue doesn't return, count your blessings, if it does, you'll be thankful you did a backup.

Good luck, eh.
 
The WD 3 & 4 TB Drives are known to be unreliable.The 1 & 2 are just fine
 
Western Digital's Black drives are among the best consumer-level models I've ever used or installed.
From my extended family all the way up to the office work-stations, I've always used 1-2TB black drives.
The only exception to this is in the form of the 500GB WD RE (RAID Edition) Enterprise class drives that I used for the two servers. I won't use their blue, purple, red or gold drives for a number of reasons, but for our needs, we're happy with these.
 
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