Disk Management - Not functioning correctly

Hi. I have 5 hard disks on my computer (four SATA internal + one external). I was able to get disk management in W7 to work one time. It reported one of my hard disks incorrectly, telling me I have a 2 Teribyte drive when I do not have it. I attempted a reformat (NTFS, default). Anyway, after doing this, I decided to reboot, hoping that W7 would re-detect this and then correct the actual value of the disk (a 500 Gig HD). Since rebooting (I have done it several times), when I start Computer Management console and click on Disk Management, windows says at the bottom of the console "connecting to Virtual Disk Service..." but it never connects. It just remains in limbo. I checked system services and all the dependencies and they are all enabled, so its not a matter of some system service being disabled.

Has anyone else had this problem of not being able to use Disk Management to see the drives? Has anyone had an incorrectly reported hard disk volume? How did you solve this problem? What can I do to get W7 Disk Management to work again?

Thanks

Originally Posted by jimc52

Hi. I have 5 hard disks on my computer (four SATA internal + one external). I was able to get disk management in W7 to work one time. It reported one of my hard disks incorrectly, telling me I have a 2 Teribyte drive when I do not have it. I attempted a reformat (NTFS, default). Anyway, after doing this, I decided to reboot, hoping that W7 would re-detect this and then correct the actual value of the disk (a 500 Gig HD). Since rebooting (I have done it several times), when I start Computer Management console and click on Disk Management, windows says at the bottom of the console "connecting to Virtual Disk Service..." but it never connects. It just remains in limbo. I checked system services and all the dependencies and they are all enabled, so its not a matter of some system service being disabled.

Has anyone else had this problem of not being able to use Disk Management to see the drives? Has anyone had an incorrectly reported hard disk volume? How did you solve this problem? What can I do to get W7 Disk Management to work again?

Thanks

I suspect a corrupted system file. Run sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt. You may have to insert your install disk.

i would suggest trying your device manager to format/ unistall or configure the drives. mine as well did not show up with intel matrix manager. i had to first set them up with the windows device manager.

I thank Busydog's response! I learned a new way to scan for Windows file errors, so the " Run sfc /scannow" command is a very good suggestion, but it turned out, was not a file corruption error...I will remember this command from now on and add it to my arsenal of other potential "fixes"

To Obsidian Shocker: I did that very thing...when the drive irroneously reported a 2 teribyte volume, I decided to reformat NTFS, Default settings. This is exactly when I LOST the hard disk and computer management console refused to show any of my devices at all...that is exactly what lead to me posting this question...I completely lost all touch with all devices in computer management console and couldn't see anything...how then am I supposed to reformat/uninstall/configure the drives? Device manager was not even showing the external HD. I guess, you could say, that what I did do was temporarily disconnect the drive and force windoz to re-detect the USB connection...and so maybe your suggestion to "uninstall" lead me to think about the answer which is below (thank you for the input!):

I thought for the benefit of others who might read this, that I post a solution to the problem. Apparently, Windows 7 did not automatically detect my external hard disk and this was hanging everything up. You know the old saying, right?
"Necessity is the mother of invention." Well, after going thru numerous reboots, and having followed the suggestions of those who answered my question, nothing seemed to work! Anyway, I did the simple, "throw a monkey wrench" at the system when all else had failed (turns out, I should have done this to begin with)...I

1). I shut down.
2). I pulled the USB connector from the external hard disk box
3). I have the USB external HD connected to its own surge protector sitting on my desk. I turned this off at the switch.
4). Rebooted back into Windows 7.
5). Turned the power switch on for the external
6). Plugged in the USB connector and VOILA! W7 detects the external disk
8). Computer management console now detects and shows all hard disk devices!
9). Problem solved!

So as the saying goes, if all else fails, throw a fit! Anyway, this is what it was. Apparently, I had to hard jockey the external drive to get it to be detected and "installed" in Windows 7.