External Hard Drive Not Showing Up or Recognized in Windows, How to Fix It?
Summary: Sometimes, external hard drives do not show up while connecting and thus making the data inaccessible. Here are the ways to resolve external hard drive not showing up issue and steps to recover data from an inaccessible drive using the most trusted Stellar Data Recovery software.
Contents
At times, when you plug in an external drive into your system it does not show up or AutoPlay in Windows. Here, you will be able, to take a look at ways to resolve external hard drive not showing up issue in Windows and make it accessible for use.
The problem starts when you plug in an external USB or hard drive to your system, and nothing happens. At times, you might hear the USB connection sound as well, but still, AutoPlay doesn’t run. When you check the drive in ‘Computer’, you don’t see any external drive there. Usually, external hard drive not showing up problem occurs when Windows names the drive to a letter that is already in use.
Steps to Locate Not Showing External Hard Drive in Windows 10, 8, 7
- Open ‘Disk Management’.
- In the disk management window, a list of all the connected external drives and the existing ones along with their complete details will be visible. Here, you will be able to determine the drive you’re trying to access by its size and format type.
- Now, right-click on the drive, select ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths’ option and then click on the Change button.
- Select a drive letter from the available alphabets to rename it. Make sure the selected drive letter is not already in use.
- A warning dialogue prompted and asked you to change the drive letter. Click Yes.
- Now, you will be able to see the changed the drive letter
- After the successful process, you’ll be able to see the AutoPlay screen asking what you want to do with the drive and ‘Computer’ also displays the drive that can be accessed.
Following these steps will most probably resolve the external hard drive not showing up in Windows. But what if the drive or new hard drive is not showing in the Disk Management as well?
External Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Disk Management
If Windows doesn’t list your external drive in the Disk Management, then possibly there could be a problem with USB port, a driver problem with Windows or you are using a dead drive.
1. Check USB Port:
- First, try to plug your targeted drive in another USB port on your computer. If it works then, you might have a dead USB port. In case you are using a USB hub then try to connect the drive directly to the computer instead since some USB hubs don’t provide sufficient power to the external drive for their proper functioning.
- If still, the drive doesn’t appear in Disk Management then connect it to another computer’s USB port to check whether the drive itself is bad or the computer has certain issues. Make sure you have checked whether the drive appears in the computer’s Disk Management window. If not then you are using a dead drive that needs to be replaced.
2. Update The Driver
- If the external hard drive does work on another computer then your Windows itself may be having a driver problem. You can determine it using Device Manager.
- Open Device Manager and check for devices with a yellow exclamation mark next to them. If you can find out a yellow exclamation mark, then there must be a driver problem. Right-click the device with a yellow exclamation mark and choose Properties, and go through the error message. This error message can help you resolve the issue.
- To resolve such problem, you can also run System Restore or can also use the Update Driver button to install an updated driver. To revert any changes, select the Roll Back Driver button or use Uninstall button to uninstall the driver from your system. Hopefully, this will configure your external drive correctly when you reconnect the drive.
3. Partitioning And Formatting the Drive
At times unpartitioned drive is also a reason for an invisible or an inaccessible external drive. When the drive is full of “unallocated space,” then you need to create a new partition on it to show its visibility. Windows Disk Management tool can fix this partition and file system issue.
Right-click inside the unallocated space, select New Simple Volume and follow the wizard to create a new partition.
In case the drive is partitioned, but still, you can’t access the drive from another device, then probably it is not formatted as NTFS. At times many devices can’t read the Windows NTFS file system. To fix this problem format the drive with the FAT32 file system.
Note: This process will remove all the stored files on your external drive, therefore first try to copy important files to another drive. In case you are unable to access the data, recover it with an efficient partition recovery software .
4. Use Professional Recovery Software
Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows is a highly recommended tool that is capable enough to restore inaccessible files from the external hard drive. Its simple and intuitive interface doesn’t require any technical know-how to run it properly. Due to its highly positive reviews many windows users use this utility to recover data from their inaccessible external drive. You can download the software by clicking on below button.
- From the main screen, ‘Select What To Recover Data’, choose the file types you want to recover and click on ‘Next’.
- Then choose the external formatted or RAW (Unrecognized) drive from the options under ‘Connected Drives’.
- Turn on the ‘Deep Scan’ toggle at the bottom and click ‘Scan.’
- During the scan, you can turn ON/OFF the file preview.
Tip: Turning file preview OFF boosts the scanning speed.
- After the scan, you’ll see that the files/folders get listed under ‘File Type’, ‘Tree View’ and ‘Deleted List.’
- Select the desired files that you want to recover from the scan result, and click on the ‘Recover’ button.
- Click ‘Browse’ and choose a save location.
- Click ‘Start Saving’ to save the recovered files at your desired location.
Final Words
Overall, whenever you face issues with your external drives, it is always better to go with a reliable data recovery software instead of trying different methods to make it accessible as it might end up with a data loss situation.
Hi Expert,
I face the same issues and unallocated. I’m following the solutions you provided. But my external hard disk doesn’t allow to format as well. It will be shown “Access is Denied”. Is there any other solutions which could help up?
Thank you.
Regards,
Mr Ong
Hi Mr Ong,
You should check the ownership of your drive. For this, open My Computer. Right click on your drive and select ‘Properties’. Once the Properties windows open, Select ‘Security Tab’ and find ‘Edit’ button. Open the edit option and check the ownership of your drive.
If you don’t find the ownership, then you can add/edit the ownership.
I have connected External hard drive to my system, but it is not showing up. It is not showing up even in the Disk Management. I have tried to connect it to another system, and it was visible there. Please suggest me what I can do?
I think you must check the Device Manager after connecting your infected drive to your system. There you can see your external drive listed (maybe with a yellow exclamation mark), do a right- click on it and update it. This will help you in making your external drive visible to your system.
I am hoping that my experience can help others.
In the past, I had a damaged external usb enclosure. I gently dismantled it and pulled the HDD out. This is a standard HDD.
Plug it into a computer, now I do not think that windows could access the files. However, for those that use windows and linux, you should have no problems as linux can read a massive variety of different file systems.
For those not using linux, use ubuntu or linux mint live CD/DVD, boot from the CD/dvd, and use the file manager to locate the HDD.
IF the HDD is still working, you can access all the files, copy them to your main HDD, or USB drives, etc. Turn the computer off, take out the Live CD/dvd, disconnect the HDD that you added, and then turn your computer on. All your files are accessible either from where you saved it on your HDD, or your other USB drives.
However. If you follow this and your files are not accessible, In my experience, your drive is damaged beyond repair…. You can take it in to an expert for file recovery, in some instances, if money is no issue, they may be able to recover files.
I believe that western digital “green” drives (they have a green label on them) have the highest fail rate out of all of the HDD in the industry, so avoid Western Digital if possible.
Hi..
I have a problem with my WD my passport external hard drive.
When i plug in the device, my computer only show the drive:H but without the drive size(free space available) underneath it.
Device manager detected it well, but sometimes it appear on disk management and sometimes it not.
I can’t access the drive via computer, but i can access it well via my smart TV.
Please help advise me with the best solution as i really need to access the data in it via my computer. Thanks in advance.
Some time Back i took backup to my external HardDisk, now I need those file back from External harddisk to my PC Win 8 ..
Please Guide me how can i get those back
Hi Mohammed,
Is your data lost? If yes, then you can try the software mentioned above. Else, connect your external hard drive to your working system and transfer it using a USB cable.
I have around 500-600 doc files on my external hard drive which I prepared after many months of work. Unluckily I forgot to take backup of those files and the data in that hard drive is missing when I check on next morning. Without any second thought, I called my system engineer friend, who informed me about Stellar Data Recovery software. I tried this software and happily recovered back all my files. This software works well with my Windows 10.
My external WD hard drive was serving as a storage powerhouse for me since last 13 months. Since one week, I observe it was not working smoothly, many times the writing speed reduces to as low as 15 MB/s. After few days, I can’t able to access any data which is around 500 GB of files, folders, mails and videos. Due to the importance of data, I contacted my PC dealer for the best possible option to recover the data at lesser time. He suggested me to use Stellar Data Recovery products. On his suggestions, I had tried this software and it easily retrieves all of my data.
I have used this magical software to overcome the problem of External hard drive not showing up an issue. This software had beautifully recovered all my data by making my external hard drive visible to me. Thanks!
Hello, I have just had the problem with my external hard drive last night. I have spent 5 hours straight and have been not able to correct the problem. I have plugged the hard drive into many different ports into my computer, including the one that worked before, but it did not work. And I have checked that the ports do work with other usb devices. The hard drive shows up under devices and printers, but not This PC. I am also not able to initialize the disk in Disk Management which does not allow me to assign it a letter. It gives me a fatal device service hardware error. I have researched and I think I have to initialize the disk then assign it a letter and I think a quick format, but I am not even able to initialize it to begin with. I also think it may be a cable problem as well, but for some reason I don’t have another cable so I have to go get one. I have also tried the troubleshooters they say it’s fixed, but it still does not come up under This PC. Hopefully we can get it fixed. Thank you in advance.
Hi Sarky,
As you said you are unable to initialize the disk or assign a drive letter to it, then it might be possible that you don’t have an ownership authority for that drive. I would suggest you to check the ownership of the drive.
For this, first take the ownership of the drive via command prompt then restart your system to check whether it can solve your problem or not.
Kindly acknowledge.
I have seen various forums where this software is highly recommended. I think that I’ll use this recommended software, in case I need it. Thanks for the post.