[SOLVED] – External Hard Drive Not Showing Up On a Computer

Written By Jyoti Prakash
Approved By Rohit Arora
Updated on 16 Jul, 2024
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Summary: Your external hard drive may not be detected on computer for many reasons, such as no drive letter assigned, outdated disk driver, or bad sectors on the drive. Since the external hard drive and its data becomes inaccessible in this case, keep a professional data recovery software handy to recover your files from the drive.

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External drives can be easily connected to your system to help you transfer or backup files. However, there are times when you connect your external hard drive to your system, but it’s nowhere to be found in the file explorer.

An external hard drive may not be detected for several reasons, including missing drive letters, corruption, or bad sectors on the drive. The issue may affect not just old, but newly purchased hard drives and prevent one from accessing their data on the drive. Fortunately, the problem can be solved with the best workarounds shared here. Understanding the underlying causes can also help you learn more about the issue and solutions to overcome it.

Reasons Behind External Hard Drive Not Showing Up on Computer

Numerous reasons tend to make external hard drives undetectable by a computer, such as:

The unexpected system shut down due to a sudden power surge while the external hard drive was still in use.
Physical damage due to mishandling or dropping the external hard drive
Virus/malware infection
Prolonged or excessive usage of hard drive
External hard drive nearing the end of its lifecycle
Bad sectors
Outdated/corrupted drivers
Unsupported file system
Insufficient power supply
Drive appearing RAW/Unallocated in Disk Management

Methods to Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing

Now that you know the causes behind external hard drives not getting recognized by your system, try solving this issue using the methods discussed here. Before moving on to the methods, let’s try a couple of quick fixes:

Quick fixes:

Method 1: Check the USB cable and drive connectivity

Try to connect the external hard drive to the same system using a different SATA to USB cable to plug in the external drive and see if it appears. If it doesn’t appear, try to use a different USB cable to connect the external hard drive. Your hard drive might be loosely connected to the motherboard and thus not getting detected by the system.

Method 2: Check USB Port

Even after changing the SATA to USB cable, the hard drive is not detected on the computer. Try connecting the external hard drive to another USB port on your computer. If it works, then it was probably a dead USB port issue. If you use a USB hub, connect the drive directly to the computer instead, as some USB hubs don’t provide sufficient power to the external drive to function properly.

Advanced Methods:

If the quick methods don’t help and the drive fails to appear in Disk Management, the drive itself may be faulty. Let’s try some advanced methods to fix the issues with the hard drive, thus solving the External Hard Not Showing Up problem.

Method 3: Check for the External Hard Drive in the BIOS

Looking into BIOS can help determine whether the computer detects the connected external hard drive. Carefully follow the steps:

Restart your computer and continuously press the designated BIOS key to enter the BIOS. The key is usually displayed on the screen. You can also 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 shows 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 4: Initialize and Assign a Letter to the External Hard Drive

If you’ve purchased a new external HDD, it might not be listed in the file explorer or computer and needs to be initialized. You also need to 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 initialize a drive –

Press WINDOWS + R, type diskmgmt. msc in the box, and click OK.

Locate your external hard drive in Disk Management. It should be visible as an ”Unknown” drive with the ”Not initialized” tag.
Right-click on it and select ”Initialize Disk.”

select the partition style and initialize the disk to recover data from an external hard drive that is not detected

You will see a pop-up window. In this window, select the partition style you want for the drive and click OK. The external hard drive is now initialized.

Assign a Drive letter –

Since the drive is still unallocated and doesn’t have a drive letter or file system, it will not appear 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.
The following window will ask you to specify the volume size. Enter the value and click Next.

enter the volume of the hard drive which is not showing up

Choose a drive letter from the drop-down in the next window and click Next.

In the Format Partition window, select the ”Format this volume with the following settings’ option and choose the File System, Allocation unit size, and Volume label.
Choose the Perform a quick format option and click on Next.

select the file system and format the initialized hard drive and recover data from the hard drive which was not showing up

On the final window, click on Finish to format the drive and assign a letter to it.

Method 5: Update Storage Controller Drivers

If your external hard drive is not showing up in the file explorer but is visible in the Disk Management utility, it could be due to outdated or corrupt storage controller drivers. Try to update the storage controller drivers using the following steps and see if the issue gets fixed.

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.

update hard drive drivers of the hard drive that is not showing up to fix the issue and recover data from it.

Go to the Driver tab and click on Update Driver.
Follow the steps as prompted by the wizard.
Restart your computer.

Method 6: Run Hardware and Device Troubleshooter using CMD

This is a typical situation where the external hard drive connected does not show in either Disk Management or File Explorer. In such a situation, you can troubleshoot 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.

open command prompt with administrator rights

Type the following command – msdt.exe –id DeviceDiagnostic and press Enter.

type the command and run it to open hardware troubleshooter

It will open the Hardware and Devices troubleshooter.
Click on Next.

run the hardware troubleshooter to fix the hard drive that is not showing up on the computer and recover data from it

Let the wizard detect the issues. If it displays any problems, click on them individually 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.

Recover Data from RAW/ Unallocated/ External Hard Drive

A severely corrupted or bad sectored hard drive may not appear in the File Explorer. However, when you access the Disk Management utility, it may appear as ‘RAW’ or ‘Unallocated’. If so, fix it by formatting it with the NT file system and drive letter to make it accessible. However, formatting the drive will result in data loss.

But don’t worry! You can always rely on Stellar Data Recovery Professional, a powerful yet easy-to-use DIY data recovery software that extracts all types of data types, including documents, files, photos, and more. This DIY software efficiently recovers the data from deleted, formatted, or corrupted hard drive partitions. The software scans the affected hard drive and lists the scan results for you to preview first and then proceed with recovery.

Final Words:

Whether you face external hard drive detection issues with a new or old hard drive, you can fix it using the methods discussed in this blog. However, remember that if the hard drive is physically damaged or severely corrupted, it may not be detected at all. In those circumstances, you’ll not be able to regain access to your hard drive data even after using professional data recovery software. It is recommended to take the physically damaged hard drive to data recovery service providers to restore your lost data.

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About The Author

Jyoti Prakash

Problem solver and Data recovery specialist. Usually share informative articles on data recovery, database corruption and ways to recover lost data.

144 comments

Sam says:

April 25, 2017 at 12:43 pm

Hlo… my laptop internal hdd is showing in the BIOS but when I boot the system… only windows starting logo comes.. and after somtimes black screen with mouse arrow comes… how can I solve that problm.. can I solve the problm with that software…?? if yes, thn plz suggest me the steps.

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  May 11, 2017 at 8:49 am
  
  Hello Sam,
  
  Please reinstall your windows, it may be possible your OS is corrupted.
  Note – You might lose your data by this way, please create an image of your hard disk. So, later on, you can retrieve your data from the image.
  
  Reply
Jordan Clinton says:

March 28, 2017 at 4:48 am

A similar issue happened to me in past. One of my external hard drives is not detecting in Windows My PC section, it makes me tensed due to the importance of data in the drive. But the drive was showing in Disk Management. After using certain common fixes, I give a try for using Stellar hard drive recovery software. The tool generated all my lost data back.

Reply
Phelia soh says:

March 23, 2017 at 3:56 am

Hi Stella my hard drive doesn’t make a noise but I my hard disk file that was inside the drive was corrupted. Does your software do a recovery on all the file that is inside the drive. Will I be able to view my picture after recovering it.

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  May 11, 2017 at 8:54 am
  
  Hello Phelia,
  
  Yes, your file can be recovered with the help of our file recovery software (which you can download from here). If you find your data corrupted, then you can use our File Repair Software to repair your corrupted file.
  
  Reply
Karen Hill says:

March 21, 2017 at 6:25 am

I have tried the manual steps but was unsuccessful in finding my hard drive for data recovery. So, I planned to purchase the above-recommended software, and fortunately, I have found my hard drive detected in my system. I immediately recovered my data from it and created a backup all my valuable data after learning a deep lesson from it.

Reply
Vishakha says:

March 18, 2017 at 7:35 am

SUBJECT: “WD My Passport Ultra 1TB Portable External Hard drive” HAS STOPPED DETECTING in My Computer/Disk Management/Device Manager

I NEED HELP URGENTLY…

I am using “WD My Passport Ultra 1TB Portable External Hard drive”.
It was working fine. Suddenly it stopped detecting in my computer as well as in disk management or device manager. The light is ON and stable when plugged in with the laptop/PC. And there is normal vibration too (normally which is felt when the drive is plugged in) which indicates it is not dead and still working which means there is still a good hope.

It got detected twice after this problem. In first case, when I tried copying something, it stopped detecting and the light became stable and while opening the hard drive it showed folder is empty. Next time when it got detected, it showed all the files and folders which means data is not lost(What a relief..!!). When I tried copying(when it was detected again), only one file was copied and the light was stable again (which should blink in normal case) and the external drive stopped showing up(detecting).

NOTE: There is no history of fall or any such thing which can damage the external HDD.

I have tried all the possible ways.
Tried using a different data cable.
Plugged the hard drive in another laptop/PC but still it did not show up in My Computer/Disk Management/Device Manager.

I have contacted WD customer support (as it is still under warranty) and informed about the same. They told me that WD does not provide data recovery service. But I got mail from WD that I can show this Hard drive for data recovery/repair and still it will be under warranty.

The executive told me that they can replace the product as it is still under warranty. But the question is not about replacement it is about the DATA. The data is VERY IMPORTANT as it has all my study related data, my research, photographs, work related data, etc.

And I know you can never rely on one storage. This was my backup as one of my laptop stopped working. And now this hard drive is causing problem and so even my backup or say now the only data I had is not at all accessible. 🙁

Can anyone help me or suggest something??

It would be really very helpful.

Thanks in advance.

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  May 11, 2017 at 8:56 am
  
  Hello Vishakha
  
  Stop using your infected hard drive immediately as it minimizes the chances of data recovery. You may try your luck by using Stellar Window data recovery software – Free Edition available at (here) for detecting your hard drive and recovering all your data.
  
  If, anyhow it doesn’t work in your case, then I advise you to opt for a Data Recovery Services and after getting your data back, just replace your hard drive which is under warranty.
  
  Reply
John Henry says:

February 23, 2017 at 7:00 am

Hey, thanks for sharing common fixes. All the points are highly informative, which are written with deep expertise. I always refer these points, in case of any HDD detecting issue.

Reply
Kevin Smith says:

February 14, 2017 at 10:04 am

With the help of this software, I happily recovered all the images and videos which are accidentally deleted from my system. In past, I use a couple of other data recovery software, but the interface of this software is really easy to use. Happily recovered all data at the nominal cost which I really don’t mind for priceless images and videos.

Reply
Douglas Clark says:

January 23, 2017 at 9:35 am

I feel happy with the working of this software. This software saves my 3 years of research work which I save in my drive. I really like cloning feature of this tool. Thanks for this post.

Reply
JIGNESH says:

January 13, 2017 at 8:26 am

I have a laptop which has a capacity of 750GB HDD. I have some important files & I am not able to open the drives as it says that ” the drive is not accessible & needs to format it”. Then I found that my hard drive has become RAW. After that I found from my friends regarding your Stellar recovery software & I had bought a software called STELLAR PHOENIX WINDOWS DATA RECOVERY 6 PROFESSIONAL & started the process for Raw recovery using the software and after completing the process for recovery, I couldn’t find any file in the classic tree. Is there any other way to recover the files from the hard drive which has become RAW?

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  January 23, 2017 at 8:29 am
  
  Hello Jignesh,
  
  I advise you that instead of using a RAW Recovery option on your hard drive, you can go for a ‘Search for Lost Volumes’ option. Once, you get the lost volume listed there in the software; then you can perform ‘Advance Scan’ option on the listed volumes to recover your data.
  
  Reply
Vivienne says:

January 11, 2017 at 4:37 am

Hi, my seagate external hard drive won’t detected in any PCs nor any other operating systems. Can this software helps to recover the data since it’s not detected anyway?

Reply
1. Jyoti Prakash says:
  
  January 11, 2017 at 5:35 am
  
  Hi Vivienne,
  
  Thanks for asking a question.
  
  I think you must go the Disk Management (you can get it by doing a right click on My Computer and selecting the Manage option listed there) and check whether your hard drive is appearing there or not. If it is listed there, then you will be able to recognize your hard drive with the help of this software.
  
  Kindly acknowledge.
  
  Thanks!
  
  Reply