[SOLVED] – External Hard Drive Not Showing Up On a Computer
Summary: ‘External hard drive not showing up’ error is generally caused due to a missing drive letter, outdated drivers and more. This blog will guide you on how to fix this error by applying different DIY methods, such as adding a drive letter to the external drive or initializing the hard drive. If there’s no time for troubleshooting and you need to recover important data from the undetectable external drive, download professional data recovery software for a faster recovery.
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My computer isn’t detecting my external hard drive. There’s a lot of important data on the drive. Can anyone tell me what the problem is and how I can get a hold of my files?
This is a common query posted by many users on various technical forums, where they are trying to figure out why the external hard drive is not showing up on their computer after connecting.
This can be an annoying situation, especially when you’re on the clock and need to access critical data immediately. Here, you need to understand that an external hard drive is just another storage device that is prone to damage and corruption.
So, instead of worrying, you should dig deep and start applying various workarounds available to help you recover data from an undetectable storage drive.
Why is my External Hard Drive not Showing Up on the Computer?
There are numerous reasons that tend to make external hard drives undetectable by a computer. It could be anything from the following –
- A sudden power surge that caused an unexpected system shutdown while the external hard drive was in use.
- Mishandling or dropping the external hard drive causing physical damage.
- Abrupt or improper system shutdown while the external hard drive is connected
- Virus/malware infection
- Prolonged or excessive use for extended durations
- External hard drive nearing the end of its lifecycle
- Bad sectors
- Outdated/corrupted drivers
- Unsupported file system
- Insufficient power supply
- Drive corruption causing the drive to appear as a RAW in Disk Management.
When an external hard drive is not recognized by your system, you will neither see it anywhere on your computer nor see any notification indicating a connected device.
Alternatively, you may also see a message, “You need to Format disk Drive E: before you can use it. Do you want to format it now?” flash on the screen upon connecting the external hard drive.
Caution: If you see this message, don’t click the ‘Format disk’ button. This will wipe all the data on the drive, and you will lose all your data.
How to Fix the External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Your PC?
Now that you know why your external hard drive is not showing up, let’s try to fix this issue using the methods explained ahead.
Pre activity –
Before moving on to the methods, try plugging the external hard drive into another USB port or another computer to see if there’s a problem with the port or the drive itself.
Also, try to change the cable and then connect. Sometimes, the cable is damaged, which results in the hard drive not showing up on your PC. Once you are done doing all checks, start employing the methods to fix the ‘external hard drive isn’t detected’ error –
Method 1: Check for the External Hard Drive in the BIOS
Looking into BIOS is a great way to see if the connected external hard drive is being detected by the computer or not. Carefully follow the steps –
- Restart your computer and continuously press the designated BIOS key to enter BIOS. Usually, the key is displayed on the screen. Or you can try pressing ESC, DEL, F2, or F8.
- Once inside the BIOS, navigate to the Boot tab.
- Locate the boot drive and see if the external hard drive is showing up.
- If it is displayed, then exit the BIOS and reboot your computer.
If your external hard drive is not showing up in the BIOS, it could be due to a faulty cable or loose connection. This could also happen if your external hard drive is uninitialized or unallocated. For this, move to the next solution.
Method 2: Initialize and Assign a Letter to the External Hard Drive
If you have recently purchased an external HDD and is not initialized, this could be the reason behind the external hdd not getting listed in the file explorer or computer. You will first need to initialize and assign a letter to the external hard drive so that the Logical Disk Manager can access it and show it in the File Explorer. To do so –
- Press WINDOWS + R, type diskmgmt.msc in the box and click OK.
- In Disk Management, locate your external hard drive. It should be visible as an ‘Unknown’ drive with the ‘Not initialized’ tag.
- Right-click on it and select ‘Initialize Disk.’
- You will see a pop-up window. Here, select the partition style you want for the drive and click OK.
The external hard drive is now initialized. Because it is still unallocated and doesn’t have a drive letter, it will not show up in the File Explorer. Here’s what to do now –
- In Disk Management, locate the unallocated external hard drive and right-click on it.
- Click on New Simple Volume.
- You will see the New Simple Volume wizard. Click Next.
- In the next window, it will ask you to specify the volume size. Enter the value and click Next.
- In the next window, choose a drive letter from the drop-down and click Next.
- In the Format Partition window, select the ‘Format this volume with the following settings’ option and then choose the File System, allocation unit size, and Volume label.
- Choose the Perform a quick format option and click on Next.
- On the final window, click on Finish to format the drive and assign a letter to it.
Method 3: Update Storage Controller Drivers
If your external hard drive is not showing up in the file explorer but is being detected by the computer, it could be due to outdated or corrupt storage controller drivers. Follow the steps mentioned here –
- Press WINDOWS + X and click on Device Manager.
- Locate Storage Controller and expand it.
- Right-click on the entry under it and click on Properties.
- Go to the Driver tab and click on Update Driver.
- Follow the steps as prompted by the wizard.
- Restart your computer.
Method 4: Run Hardware and Device Troubleshooter using CMD
This is a typical situation where the connected external hard drive does not show in either the disk management or the File Explorer. In such a situation, you can troubleshoot any device-related issues by running the hardware and device troubleshooter via CMD. To do this –
- Press WINDOWS + R and type cmd. Press CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER to open it with administrator privileges.
- Type the following command – msdt.exe –id DeviceDiagnostic and press Enter.
- It will open the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter.
- Click on Next.
- Let the wizard detect the issues. If it displays any issues, click on them one by one and follow the steps as prompted to troubleshoot them.
- Restart your computer.
Note – Also, expand the ‘Disk Drives’ entry and update the drivers of your storage drive.
How to Recover Data from an External Hard Drive that is not Showing Up?
External drive not showing up on a computer can worry anyone as they are mostly used for creating backups of important files and data.
If you are currently in such a situation, worry not as you can recover the lost data from an unrecognized (RAW) drive or volume using a professional data recovery software like Stellar Data Recovery Professional.
It is an easy-to-use software that is light on storage and effective in almost every data loss scenario. Here is a short video to show you the steps involved in performing data recovery.
Another great thing about this software is its built-in Drive Monitor utility. This little addition helps in checking the health and other vitals of any storage drive and informs the user if there is any issue with the drive.
Conclusion
We store our important files and data on external hard drives to maintain a backup of our data and to prepare ourselves for any unexpected data losses. However, it is so frustrating to see our storage drive not getting detected by the computer. If your external hard drive is not showing up on the PC, you can follow the given methods discussed above and access it. Let us know which method helped you fix this issue.
Hello,
May you help me please?
I own some dead HD e and there is a message saying :couldn’ t open drive multi(o) disk(o) rdisk(o) partition(o) rdisk(o) partition(1).
I gave a Computer tecnicician, He recovered my files but a dawn China made extern hd is not open the files só. I have tô start over again, if this term is correct.
What are my chances to try Re-do it once More?
How many times after formatting or not can a dead hd recover files again?
I am looking forward for your reply.
Sincerely,
Mr.Santos
Hi Luiz,
Data Recovery is dependent upon a lot of factors like data loss reason, the severity of corruption, overwritten activities, status or condition of the drive etc. Logical recovery is only possible through the Stellar software if the drive is mounted and getting detected by the software.
We recommend availing Data Recovery Services for the dead hard drives. We have class 100 clean room labs where the data is recovered physically from the drive by expert technicians.
hi my seagate external hard disc is not detecting and blinking led light only. no sound.. i tried to check with other computers and cables. but no use. the led light is blinking only. i also tried the different instructions showing in this site.
once it will connect to system led light is stable and after some seconds light blinking.
We recommend going for data recovery services, in which you need to send a hard drive to our lab. We will analyze it and let you know whether recovery is possible or not.
Similarly mine Seagate hard drive is not detecting by Acer Windows 10 laptop couple of weeks back. With so much important official files. I need to retrieve the files in any case and having no backup makes the situation got tenser. But Thanks to Stellar Data Recovery Professional version I recover all my data using Deep Scan mode.
Hello Lisa,
Thanks for trusting Stellar Data Recovery Pro version.
Hi
I have a lenovo external harddisk of 500GB. I was browsing through the files on it, but all of a sudden it made few clicks and stopped responding. I restarted the PC but the disk is not getting listed. though it is detected in the device manager. I tried the Stellar Phonix windows data recovery software but that too doesnt detect the drive. Please suggest how can i recover the data, I tried on other system too but still the same problem.
Unfortunately, recovery by using the application is not possible as the drive is not getting listed inside the application. We recommend you to submit your drive to our lab for Data Recovery Service.
kindly let us know your contact number and convenient time so that we can call you. You can also email to our support team on their below email address:
support@stellarinfo.com
Your reply is awaited.
Great info. It helped in our research. We are working on a similar article, would you like to take a look when it’s published? Thanks.
My Toshiba SSD was earlier not detected in the File explorer section. It contains all important official as well personal documents. Stellar’s phoenix software makes my work easy without going anywhere. Deep Scan feature really impressed me.
Hello Kane,
Thanks for using Stellar Windows Data Recovery software.
Hello,
My computer isn’t booting because the hdd cant b detected. I have removed it and cased it as an external drive, on connecting it to another computer, Windows is able to see the partitions, but they are not readable. It hacks when you try to chkdsk it. Is there a way I can recover the data in it? I really need your help. Thanks
Hello Nje,
We recommend you to try the demo version of Stellar Windows Data Recovery Professional from the below mentioned link:
Download Link
After installing the software, please perform the ‘Deep Scan’ on your drive and check whether you are able to find the data or not.
If you do not find the desired results then please perform scan with ‘Can’t Find Drive’ option to search the lost volume and to check the possibility of recovery.
All the Best
Hi there, my hard disk was faulty due to a faulty connection point. I changed the casing and the HDD could not be recognized. Then I installed the Stella recovery software after reading the post here. Now I managed to recover the files but when I tried opening the files, I get a message that my file is damaged. Any idea why this is so?
Hello Chandra,
This might happen due to the bad sectors in hard drive. I would recommend that after recovering the files use the Stellar file repair software.
hello expert, please help me. i have seagate one tb backup plus external hard disk. but it is suddenly not recognising in my laptop. i tryed with other computer and also change the cable. but no use. it is not appearing in diskmanagement also. but only appearing in device manager under device drivers. when i try to trubbleshoot this, it is showing driver working fine. also updated. so what can i do? also tryed uninstalling the driver. but same problem. some noice also comming from this hard disk. i have importent data on it. please help me soon. i need salution to recognise or data recovery.
Hello Manju,
Sorry to hear about your hard drive.
As informed by you about a noise from hard disk which is a most common symptom of a physical error in a drive. Please immediately stop using this drive.
We respect your data and understand its importance, we recommend contacting our support team at support[@]stellarinfodotcom to better assist you and help you in data recovery.
Hi
My seagate external hard disk which was working fine suddenly when connected prompted me to format first ! I tried running chkdsk for error and it did appear in disk management as RAW healthy primary partition !
I tried recovering files by using a software and I saw all my data being scanned ! But suddenly after some time the laptop became unresponsive and shut down ! Then I tried switching on laptop and connecting again ! It does make the sound while connecting but does not appear in yeh my computer ! It’s not visible in device management but in devices and printers shows as drivers need to be updated ! I tried updating the drivers but says installation failed !
Help have I lost all my data because of using the software and destroyed my hard disk further ! I haven’t over written or formatted the drive ever ! Can I still recover data !??
Please suggest !
Hello Neha,
Please perform the below common fixes.
1) Try to reassign a drive letter to the hard drive.
Go to Start -> My Computer.
In the window that opens, take a note of all the letters already assigned to drives.
Now click on “Map a network drive” and in the window that opens, click on the “Drive” button.
From the drop-down, choose a drive letter that’s not in use.
Browse and navigate to the unrecognized external hard drive and then click on “OK”.
Click on the “Finish” button to close the window.
Restart the computer and then reconnect the drive and see if it works
2) Try to connect the external hard drive with some other working PC/Laptop.