Why isn't my Surface 2 recognizing my new external WD My Passport hard drive?

[Windows Central Question]

My Surface 2 doesn't recognize my new external "WD My Passport" hard drive

I just bought a WD My Passport external hard drive of 1 tera but my Surface 2 doesn't recognize it.

 

[Ed Boland]

Re: My Surface 2 doesn't recognize my new external "WD My Passport" hard drive

I had the same problem when I had my surface 2. You can get it to work though. I forget right off hand what I had to do, but this page may help you:

USB External Drive Not Recognized On Surface? Troubleshooting Tips - LoveMySurfaceLoveMySurface

 

[im2late51]

Thank you very much Ed. The link you provided helped me discover what had gone wrong. I placed a PNY SSD drive into an Inateck USB drive enclosure and although I'd assigned a drive letter when I formatted the drive in Disk Management, the drive letter was not appearing after the formatting was completed. My desktop computer assigned a letter automatically so the drive worked there, but the Surface Book did not, so the laptop could not use the drive even though it appeared in Disk Management and in My Devices. Once I assigned a letter to the drive, I was able to read and write files to it. Hope this is a help to someone else.