How to Fix Not Responding Hard Drive
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.
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.
Possible Causes for Hard Drive Not Responding
- 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 ‘More Tools’ 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.
Watch this video to learn how to scan your affected drive and recover inaccessible data.
Now that you have your data back, go ahead and apply following fixes to repair your hard disk.
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 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.
About The Author
Satyeshu Kumar
Satyeshu is a Windows blogger and data recovery expert. He is having good technical knowledge and experience in Windows data recovery. He writes about latest technical tips, Windows issues and tutorials.
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Hello Satyeshu, thank you for providing this information. My HD was not responding after I inserted it into PC and it hanged. I tried option 2 above of chkdsk. once the step 4 completed, it gave message “an unspecified error occurred 766f6c756d652e63 470” and after that step 5 did not initiate. The HD is still not responding. Can you please help? Thanks.
Hi, you can try one more check and see if it works. Right click on the drive and select properties. Go to “Tools” tab and click “Check” on Error checking option.
Hello, I did as you suggested, however, it says that “The disk check could not be performed because windows can’t access the disk”. Also, after clicking Properties on the drive, on the Tools tab, it is showing ‘Used space’, ‘Free space’ and ‘Capacity’ all as 0. Is there a way to retrieve the data?
Hi, you can download our software and try recovering data with it. The software is free to try and you need to pay only if you can preview your lost files.
Download from here: https://www.stellarinfo.com/free-data-recovery.php
Hi, All the information on this blog I found so useful. It helped me to fix my hard drive related problem. I appreciated.
Hello Kyle,
I pleased to know you resolve your problem with the help of our blog. Thanks
Hi
My pc runs with ssd loaded OS. 2tb for data storing, suddenly it stopped working ,unable to detect in any pc .Technician said that HDD is not repairable plz collect. I need the data from that drive .Plz can you suggest me.
Hi chander,
You can contact our technical support team. In this case, they will assist you in better ways. You may contact through Call or Mail.
Contact: Phone: +91-124-4326777
Email: support[at]stellarinfo.com
During decrypting my seagate expertnal 1 TB harddisk my laptop shutdown , now i m not able to access my harddisk . When i connect it in any laptop it is not showing in disk management and it slow down the system also . Pls help me
Hello Raghav Gupta,
First, you have to check it has a physical problem or logical. So carefully inspect your external hard drive for any physical damage. Check it, making some noise. If it looks okay, then connect it to pc. You can reinstall the driver using the device manager. Use antivirus software to scan the system. Sometimes it becomes the cause of not showing the hard drive.
One more option is to check the hard drive health using a drive monitor. The drive monitor is an inbuilt utility of the Stellar Data Recovery Professional. When you download this software, you can use it and verify your hard disk health. It will remove the bad sectors on your drive. Thanks
hi I have a 4TB WD MY PASSWORK It was working good then one day it stop responding. while I am in its files its stop then after a time it open a box saying “this location is not a accessible and the device is not ready” then it close
even the light in the external when it is first connected it start lighting on and off then it stop on just light on
and some time the folders open and says this folder is empty and sometime opens normally ?????
please help
Hello Tawadrous,
We would like to inform you that our software can recover data from the hard drive if it lists in disk management of the system. Also the software unable to recover data from a physically damaged hard drive.
Kindly check for the hard drive and if it shows then run the scan on it.
Hello sir,
I am using 4tb wd my passport, suddenly it slows down while I m working on it. My external hard drive freezes windows explorer and not responding, even my drive is not getting right-click. I m already used chkdsk cmd but it shows “disk read error occurredc00000b5” and it also shows that “The disk doesn’t have enough space to replace bad clusters” (Drive has 120gb free space). The drive also freezes the disk management and the drive doesn’t even show in “disk list cmd”. As I m trying to recover my data using the software it also freezes that software too (I m also try to recover using stellar).
Please, guide me to recover my data as the drive has my projects and other important files.
Thanks
Hello Akshay,
We can certainly understand your concern. We would like to inform you that there might be bad sectors in the drive that is causing the issue, so we have an option in the stellar software to create an image of the drive.
Kindly create an image of the drive first and then run the scan on the drive. It will list you the recoverable data.
Thanks!!
i have wd 1 tb hd.
it is not detected by any computer, it is showing in devie and printers……but i can not access it any how….i tried in vaqrious pcs but same problem .
when i chk it indisk management i fount it here but i got a msg of i/o error
how can i resolve it
Hello Vish,
If the drive is showing in disk management and you want to recover data. Then you can try a free demo of our Data recovery software i.e. Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows” and perform Can’t find the process for recovery. If still drive not detected in the software then you can take help from the local IT person. Thanks
Hi,
I have one 1TB WD and one 1TB Seagate hard disks. Both have issues while detecting in the system. Seagate one is getting detected but slows down the system gets stuck but on MAC it gets detected but I can recover from that only one file at a time which takes a lot of time. I guess your software should work on this.
However, my other drive(WD: It had fallen from a small hight) makes a grinding sound when I connect it to the laptop. Do you suggest me to try recovery tool on it or shall I just take it to some specialist if using it may cause more damage to it? As the data is very important and I don’t want to lose it.
Hello Meenal,
First, if we talk about your Seagate hard disk so there may be several reasons being slow down like you don’t run the Disk Defragmentation for a long time, some logical error or bad sectors has been created, insufficient power and damaged USB port. So you have to check all of these factors. Our software does not affect the processing speed of the hard drive. So you have to check manually or you can take our Tech support service.
Secondly, If your hard drive is fallen and making the sound so first save your data in another storage drives. If you are in any data loss situation and your drive is showing, so you can use Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows to recover your data. In another situation like physical damage, you can take our tech support services.
Contacts: Phone: +1-877-778-6087
Email: support[at]stellarinfo.com
HI.
My Hard disk is not booting and the service guys say its crashed and made me buy a new HDD.
I need my photos and videos to be recovered from my old drive. but it is not being detected at all in any PC. I’ve tried using an external HDD case to connect my HDD as a USB to another PC, but still not being detected at all.
Please suggest what could be done to recover the data I need
Hello Obaid,
Use a tool like Drive Monitor or Crystal Disk Info to check the SMART disk information. The SMART parameters indicate critical problems to help you find the right course of action to deal with a crashed hard drive.
In case the system doesn’t boot, immediately remove the drive from the system and use a SATA-to-USB converter cable to connect the drive to another functional Windows PC and check in disk management. Still, it isn’t detected, reach out to a data recovery expert for immediate help. You can contact our Technical Support Team via call or email.
Contacts: Phone: +1-877-778-6087
Email: support[at]stellarinfo.com
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:
<https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/recover-files-from-raw-external-hard-drive/>
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 @ https://www.stellarinfo.com/windows-data-recovery-professional.php
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:-
https://cloud.stellarinfo.com/StellarDataRecoveryProfessional-B.exe
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: https://www.stellarinfo.com/blog/why-your-usb-flash-drive-is-constantly-disconnecting-reconnecting/
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: https://www.stellarinfo.com/free-data-recovery.php
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: https://cloud.stellarinfo.com/StellarDataRecoveryProfessional-B.exe