I go throw dozens of drives a year and can state as a fact Windows will sometimes not detect a drive in say "My Computer" depending on various things including if the drive has previously been used via an external USB device or has not been assigned a letter, how it has been formatted etc. So basically you have to go into disk management and format/initialise/create new volume/assign a drive letter etc, so the disk is detected by the OS.
Furthermore upgrading the firmware to sort out compatibilities issues with your system, is not repairing the drive. It's pretty much basic stuff that is fairly common.
From what I can gather from your replies you had access to the drive as you knew about the Asus files on there connecting via USB (connecting externally) but were having difficulties getting Windows to detect it connecting via SATA? Pretty much all you had to do was exactly as I said in my first reply as I have done many times myself in the past. Right click on "My Computer" > Select "Manage" > Select "Disk Management" and "format/initialise" the disk.
The firmware upgrade did not "repair" the drive but I think its safe to say the "hard format/reset" basically formatted the drive in a way windows recognised it, which you could have simply done in disk management.
Anyhow i'm glad you got it all sorted in the end, bracket is on route to you 1st class and should be with you tomorrow. Hopefully the drive will give you years of use. Regards
