How to Fix Not Responding External Hard Drive
Summary: In a worst-case scenario, if a hard drive can’t be repaired, we have mentioned how you can get back your data safely from such hard drives with the help of Stellar Data Recovery software.
Contents
An external hard drive may stop responding on Windows due to problems related to the system or storage hardware and software. In some cases, trying a different port or PC may work. But if it doesn’t, do not try to repair the drive by using any third-party drive or partition manager software such as Disk Management in Windows. Instead, follow this comprehensive guide to repair your ‘not responding’ hard drive without any risk of data loss.
Possible Causes for External Hard Drive Not Responding/ Showing up
- Bad sectors
- File system errors
- Virus and Malware infection or corrupt file (Virus or Malware).
- Damaged device driver issue
- Overheating
- SMART errors
- Mechanical or physical error
How to Fix the External Hard Disk Is Not Detected Issue?
You can follow these steps to fix the problem with your hard drive.
1. Inspect Hard Drive
Carefully inspect your hard disk for any physical damage. If it looks fine, connect it to your PC and observe the drive for any screeching or clicking noise.
- Check the connecting wire or cable for damage or loose connection.
- Get closer to the connected drive and check if the drive is on and rotating continuously. It should not stop and run intermittently. If that is the case, there could be some internal mechanical problem or software related error.
- On your PC, install and run Stellar Data Recovery Professional. It’s free to download.
- Choose ‘Monitor Drive’ under the ‘Waffle icon’ to check the disk health and temperature. Make sure the drive is not overheating and health status is good. Further, click ‘Smart Status’ and check the SMART attributes for any warning signs.
- You may also scan the drive to check bad sectors, which might be the reason why the drive is not responding or stops responding.
- If the health is poor, click ‘Clone Disk’ and watch this video to create a disk clone of your failing hard drive.
CAUTION: If the data is critical and you don’t want to risk permanent data loss, you must use a powerful DIY data recovery software such as Stellar Data Recovery Professional. Post recovery, you can go ahead and perform various checks and fixes discussed in this post and other sites, including drive formatting without worrying about data loss.
2. Run CHKDSK
File system errors are caused by improper disk usage, virus/malware infection, and buildup of bad sectors in the hard drive due to logical or physical damage.
CHKDSK is a command-line based Windows utility that checks the hard disk integrity, repairs various file system errors, and tries to recover readable information from bad sectors. Running CHKDSK scan may fix your corrupt or RAW hard disk, which could be a reason why your hard disk is not responding.
Follow these steps to run the CHKDSK scan on your affected hard disk:
- Connect the drive to a different Windows PC and press ‘Windows + Q’.
- Type CMD, then right-click on Command Prompt and choose ‘Run as Administrator’.
- Type chkdsk X: /r /f in the command prompt windows and press the ‘Enter’ key.
Replace letter X with your external hard drive letter /r & /f are the CHKDSK parameters.
This begins CHKDSK scan, verification, and repair process. When finished, restart system and reconnect the external hard drive to the PC. Check if you can access it.
3. Use an Antivirus & Anti-Malware Tool
When a virus or malware infects the external drive, it can cause some serious trouble that can lead to data loss. If a hard drive stops responding, it could be a corrupt or virus/malware infected file on the hard drive that must be removed to fix the drive error.
You can use Windows Defender tool in Windows or leverage a reliable third-party antivirus and anti-malware tool to quarantine the infected file(s).
4. Re-Install the Drivers
Sometimes, due to corruption and damage to the disk device drivers, you may experience this issue. You can easily fix this by re-installing or updating device drivers via ‘Device Manager’. The steps are as follow,
- Press ‘Windows+S’ and type ‘Device Manager’.
- Click on ‘Device Manager’.
- Expand ‘Disk Drives’ and right-click on your external hard drive name.
- Choose ‘Uninstall’. Click the ‘OK’ button to confirm uninstallation.
- Now restart the system. You may also disconnect the drive and then connect it after a few seconds to begin device driver installation.
- Then open File Explorer and check the drive
If this doesn’t work, go to your hard drive manufacturer’s website and download the latest drivers available for your hard drive model. Install them manually and restart the system.
5. Format the Disk
Use Disk Management tool or DISKPART utility to full format the drive. You may also choose to low-level format your affected hard disk by using HDD LLF tool.
While full format or low level formatting will take a while to complete, it will fix most disk errors and clean the drive from pesky malware or virus infected files.
In case the drive is still not repaired and data recovery software did not work, immediately contact a data recovery expert. There is a possibility of hardware or mechanical failure, which can’t be fixed by a user and requires expert help.
Conclusion
Keep your system protected by installing a trusted antivirus or anti-malware software. Run scheduled CHKDSK scans and leverage a SMART drive monitoring utility to monitor your system drive or external hard drive health on the go. This will help you prevent most common disk errors that may cause issues such as hard drive is not responding.
Above all, keep a regular backup of all your important files.
But if such error occurs, start by inspecting the drive physically and then leverage a DIY Professional data recovery software such as Stellar Data Recovery Professional. It comes equipped with a SMART drive monitor utility that lets you known hard disk health status and whether it requires replacement. The software will also help you restore data from such hard drives that stop responding due to corruption and file system errors.
If the data is critical and more important than the disk, follow this guide and immediately get back data from your Windows-based hard drive.
I have 1 TB external HD and my system is no longer read it, it will show light indicating that the system is reading but it will not show at the end. I follow the instruct on CMD it it bring this error “Cannot open volume for direct access” please, what is your further advice,. thank you
Hi, reason for this is your drive must have become corrupt and you might be running chkdsk command. To solve this issue you need a data recovery software. Please follow the mentioned blog:
Read More
In the blog you can skip the part mentioning “Repair File System Errors with CHKDSK” and start from the video. And remember, even if prompted DO NOT format your hard drive before data recovery.
umm i got a 1tb external hdd when i plug it in it freezes the whole computer and the moment i disconnect it the computer gets back to normal
Hi Hassan,
You need to perform troubleshooting first, you can apply all steps which is given above. Still, you won’t be able to fix it then you need to contact the local hardware vendor to fix the drive.
In order to recover data before replacing the drive, you can use our software (Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows).
Hi, i got 2 tb maxtor hdd here, and it shows up, and i can go into it, but lot of the files can be accessed, and it sometimes stops the hold Windows Explorer. Cant copy any files from it either. Tried running chkdsk T: /R A aswell, but in sateg 4 (Looking for bad clusters in user file data), it gives me this error: “A disk read error occurredc0000185”. After a little bit more time it said “The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters”. Not really sure what to do anymore
Hello Mathias,
If you are facing any data recovery issue in such cases then you can use our software i.e. Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows in order to recover deleted or lost data. Thanks
Hi
I have a 2 TB external hard disk. If i connect it to my laptop with the usb cable, it disconnects automatically y after 2-3 minutes. Now I am trying to copy all the files from the hard drive to my laptop, but it takes too much time to open the external hdd. It immediately disconnects and it is not possible for me to copy my files. Need your help to solve this issue because the external hdd contains a lot of valuable data like project reports, office docs, etc
Hello Melvin,
Please make sure that the USB port are working fine. If you still face the same issue then we recommend you to avail Data Recovery Services. Thanks.
hi i have a 256 ssd and 2T hdd
but when im using my hdd and click a files or program, it’s going to stand by for 3 sec after a few moments , it Repeat.
(my windows installed on ssd)
Hi, I would recommend you to scan your drive for any bad sectors or any other error which may be causing this. For this you can download the free trial version of Stellar Data Recovery Professional and use the “Monitor Drive” option in it. Let me know what are the results of the scan after which I can resolve any issue more appropriately. You can free download the software from here @
Hi. when I connect my portable HDD to a laptop, it gets detected first but then immediately stops working. A tiny window asking to end process also shows up in the left top corner. After several minutes, entire opened windows get restarted again. I can see the preview of files/folders whenever the drive is connected but I can’t move/copy/access any of my files. Can you please help me with a solution? Thank You
Anjana
Hello Anjana,
Please let us know how you are connecting the drive to the computer and is this drive making any grinding or clicking noise?
Since you can’t able to move the files then we recommend using Stellar Data Recovery Professional software to recover the inaccessible data.
If you have still any other inquiry kindly contact our support team on support[@]stellarinfo.com
Hi. I used to connect the external drive using the provided USB cable only. Yes, I’ve been hearing a clicking noise while ejecting the drive. It’s still under the warranty& I was about to send it to Seagate but I’m worried about the data and I’m still waiting to know If there’s any way that I could restore them.
Hello Anjana,
Please, not to use the drive since creating noise may damage it further.
You may avail our data recovery services in such scenario to recover files from such a physically issued drive.
Actually I tried to analyze my hard but I couldn’t the hard work fine but every time I try to do with something like open a file or format or analyze first when I try to open a file the green line start to move and then the laptop get stuck after that the drive disconnected itself
We would like to inform you that to recover the data from software, the drive should be connected continuously.
If you are using a USB hard drive then please try to connect the drive with a different USB cable and check with the disk management that the drive is showing there or not. If the drive is showing there then please download the demo version of the software and perform the scan to check the possibilities of data recovery if any data is missing there.
You may download the demo versions of the software from below mentioned link:-
Download Link
The ‘Imaging’ feature of Stellar Windows Data Recovery (Pro) enables me to recover data from dying hard drive.
Thanks Luz
Hey
I have another problem with my hard drive when I plug-in my hard drive it work but when I try to open a file my laptop get stuck and the hard drive get discounted . I have searching for this problem and I didn’t find any help so I was hoping that you can help with that problem .
Hi,
I would suggest analyzing your drive via the disk defragmenter tool in windows. This issue might be because your disk is highly fragmented.
You can also check this article for possible solutions Read More
Hey,due to downloading a virus infected .mp3 file my hard disk has stopped working and displays “Not Responding” error.
I don’t have much important data in the hard disk however I wish to recover it with a Free software.
Can you suggest me a free alternative to WDR-Pro?
Hello Michael,
There are several options alternatives for WDR-Pro, however, I would recommend you to use the Free version
Here is the link of the software Read More
Can’t find any other reliable option than Stellar hard drive recovery for recovering not responding hard drives.
Thanks for trusting Stellar hard drive recovery software.
I have a one year old USB 1TB hdd and it is no longer showing in windows explorer nor computer management. It is drive H: And when I connect the usb cable to the computer, it makes all the familiar connection sounds (the hdd light and usual hdd sounds when connecting it is heard). However, it no longer shows up. What can I do to resolve this? My last backup was a year ago and I have tons of new files on it that is irreplaceable. What can I do to try and at least get it working once so that I can just back it up to another HDD? Thank you. John.
Hello John,
Thanks for contacting Stellar Data Recovery!
Sorry to hear about your 1TB HDD.
Have you tried reliable & easy to use Stellar Data Recovery Professional Software? If the hard drive is accessible by the software then recovery is possible by the application. If the HDD is still not accessed by the normal method, switch to inbuilt “Deep Scan” feature. For your better assistance, I’ll share the download link below.
Link: Download Link