Fixing the problem of an external hard drive not shown on windows can be frustrating. Shops can also charge a lot. If you are facing a similar problem, here are 5 ways that you can fix an HDD not showing up in Windows 10. After these, the system will be able to read your external hard disk drive.
Check your Drive management
There might be many reasons why an external Hard Drive is not working when you plug it in. It might be because of a partition issue, wrong file system, or wrong USB ports. Try doing these steps.
- Press the Windows + X keys. Or you can do it manually by searching Disk Management on the search bar of your screen. Also, you can run dialogue with Windows +R and enter the keyword diskmgmt.msc
- It will now take you to the disk management window. You can see your external drive under the primary and secondary disks. If it does not show it might because the disk is not a partition yet.
- In section 4 create a new volume and put a drive letter and partition. So other devices can access
- If it has not shown up still it is a hardware issue or maybe the drive is dead.
Plug into another USB port
The USB port that your plugin might be the problem. And that is why it is unable to show the external HDD. Not all but a few of the USB hubs do not give enough power to read the external drive.
Troubleshoot Driver issue
You can always check the troubleshooter, which is at the device manager for any driver problem. Do this by using the shortcut by pressing Windows +X keys. Expand the Disk drivers and check if they show yellow exclamation next to the driver. If there is an issue you can right-click and go to properties and see the message for any solution.
Read also: Amazon Smart Plug launched in India for Rs 1,999
Change Driver Path
Another method to fix the unrecognised external hard drive is to change the drive letter. For this, you need to go to Disk management with the keys mentioned above.
- Right-click on the disk partition with no letter
- Select change Drive letter and Path in the context menu
- Click add button
- Assign a drive letter ( for example E, G, D)
Format the drive
Remember formatting your external drive will result in erasing all your data in the drive. Make sure you have copied all important data on another device or any other source.
Hope this basic process helps solve the problem with your external HDD. There might be many other reasons why the external drive is not recognising. There are also many other methods that you can try to fix the problem. For example, you can update/uninstall/rollback driver, reinstall USB controller, enable legacy USB support in BIOS, update system to the latest version available, disable USB selective suspend setting, update motherboard chipset drivers, fix the system built-in drivers, run an antivirus scan on the computer and external drive.
For the latest gadget and tech news, and gadget reviews, follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. For newest tech & gadget videos subscribe to our YouTube Channel. You can also stay up to date using the Gadget Bridge Android App.
