WD My Passport Essential 320GB, Recognized as a Disk Drive

[AdumUp]

I received a 320GB WD My Passport Essential external hard drive in working condition from my dad. It was loaded with a bunch of crap so i decided to format it, i wasn't having any luck with windows formatting tool, but i read in another forum that using the Life Guard Tool provided by WD would format it if you selected to "Write Zero's" to the drive. I did this and about 5 minutes later i had a formatted drive. Only problem is is that my computer now recognizes it as a Disk Drive, Not a Hard Drive or USB Device. Ive tried uninstalling the device and plugging it back in but as soon as i do, it says searching for drivers then instantly recognizes it as a Disk Drive. Ive been looking all over for something i can do to fix the problem, its been two hours and I'm about to snap the thing in half. Any help would be appreciated.

[bicostp]

Does it show up under My Computer or Disk Manager at all?

If you zeroed it out, you erased the master boot record and partition table. Unless the utility did it for you (most don't), you need to repartition the hard drive. Right-click My Computer, select Manage. Accept the UAC prompt. Under "Storage", select "Disk Management". After it probes the hard drives it should come up with one that has no partitions in it. Right-click inside the empty box and create a new NTFS partition.

It might have lost the fancy name, but as long as it works properly after you repartition it, that doesn't make any difference.

[AdumUp]

I'm waiting for it to finish formatting but it looks like the computer recognizes it!
Thank you for the help sir.

[AdumUp]

It now recognizes the drive but its in RAW format. I formatted it to NTFS and saved a few files to it, unplugged the drive to take it to my other computer and when i plugged it in, it was back in RAW format.... i took back to the 1st computer, same problem. I hate this thing to death but cant afford a new one at the moment. any suggestions?

[bicostp]

Sounds like the drive itself may be going bad.

Use WD's utility or The Ultimate Boot CD to do a diagnostic on it.