Top Guide to Fix External Hard Drive Doesn’t Appear on Windows

An external hard drive, also known as a mobile hard disk/drive, is a kind of rather common data storage medium. Due to its biggest feature – good portability, an external hard drive is used widely around the world to store & exchange data. Storing important private data, backing up system/valuable data, and exchanging files between computers & different devices are the three main functions of an external hard drive. Thus, we can draw a conclusion that an external hard drive is indispensable for many people.

For instance, the WD external hard drive is used widely by people throughout the world. We advise you to click here to know how to recover data from WD external hard disk which is not detecting.

However, we can’t ignore the troublesome issue – external hard drive doesn’t appear after you connect it to a computer. This is not a rare issue; it has ever happened to many people and will be happening to more.

When you connect your external hard drive to a computer via a USB port, trying to access data, manage files, or update the backup, you may disappointedly find that it is not even showing up. You’ll definitely be freaked out at this time, wondering if there are any ways to fix the problem or at least to recover files from external hard drive not showing up.

That’s also what we care about. So in the following content of this article, we’ll do mainly three things for you:

1. Introduce the problem – external hard drive not showing up.
2. Show you how to recover files from external hard drive with MiniTool data recovery software.
3. Tell you how to fix an external hard drive that won’t read in several practical ways.

Chapter 1: Take A Closer Look At “External Hard Drive Doesn’t Appear”

People who are suffering from external hard drive not showing up in My Computer error must be eager to know the effective ways to make external hard drive show up and work as usual. Besides, if there are some files useful for them stored on the external hard drive, they also want to know how to recover data from a non-detecting hard disk (since they are not willing to or can’t afford to lose those data).

Our suggestion is to complete external hard drive data recovery first before you try the possible means to fix the error, in case of any unexpected data loss situations. In consequence, we’ll talk about how to recover data from external hard disk which is not working normally.

We can divide the external hard drive does not appear issue into mainly 2 types.

1. In many cases, the external hard drive not showing in Windows Explorer would appear in Disk Management; this is what we call external hard disk detected but not showing in My Computer.

2. However, there are also other cases in which you can’t see the external hard drive in Windows Disk Management; this is known as an external hard drive not showing in Disk Management.

In case 1, you should take immediate action to recover data while, in case 2, you have no choice but to use the possible methods we’ll mention in chapter 2 to try to solve the problem and show the external hard drive on my computer.

External Hard Disk Files Recovery on Windows

MiniTool Power Data Recovery specializes in recovering lost data in various situations, including partition loss, device formatting, virus infection, etc. Moreover, this software is compatible with diverse data storage devices, encompassing external hard drives, USB drives, SD cards, and more. Even if your external hard drive doesn’t show up on the computer due to partition loss, space unallocated, or RAW file system, MiniTool Power Data Recovery is capable of detecting it and recovering data from this device. Here is a detailed guide about how to recover files from external hard drive.

Step 1: Get MiniTool Power Data Recovery.

You can get MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free by clicking the download button below to have a try. After successfully installing the software, double-click on it to enter the main interface.

MiniTool Power Data Recovery FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Now, you can choose the problematic partition to scan under the Logical Drives section. If the whole external hard drive not showing up, you are suggested to scan the entire drive in the Devices tab.

Step 2: Locate the required files on the result page.

Please wait patiently until the scan process is completed. There should be numerous files on the result page. To help you locate the required files quickly, this software contains several useful features.

The Filter feature allows you to set the filter criteria, such as file size, file type, file category, and last modified date. This helps you to filter out unnecessary files with specific conditions.

The Type feature will list files according to file types and file formats. When you need to recover a certain type of file, this feature makes great sense.

The Search feature enables you to search files with their complete or partial names. The software will detect the match items and display them on the filter screen.

The Preview feature is used when you find a possible file. You can double-click on the file to verify its file content before saving it. This feature enhances the data recovery accuracy largely.

Step 3: Choose the wanted files and recover them.

After finding the demand files from the file list, you can tick the boxes in front of them and click the Save button. In the prompt small window, choose a restoration path that is different from the original one. Saving files to the original path might cause data overwriting, leading to data recovery failure.

A window will prompt you to inform that the restoration is finished. Please note that the free edition only provides 1GB of free data recovery capacity.

Since you are recovering files from the external hard drive, a larger data recovery capacity is required. You can jump to this page to choose one edition that suits you best.  For individual users, the Personal Ultimate edition is highly recommended due to its unlimited data recovery capacity and lifetime free update.

Top Recommendation

If it is your USB flash drive that is not detected on the computer, you’d better read USB Flash Drive Not Recognized – Don’t Worry Too Much to learn how to recover files and how to solve the problem in different cases.

Recover Data from External Hard Drive Not Recognized on Mac

If you find the external hard drive doesn’t show up on a Mac and want to recover files from it on a Mac, you can try Stellar data recovery for Mac. This software is designed to recover files from Mac and other removable devices, including external hard drives.

Data Recovery for MacClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

You can read this post to learn how to use Stellar Data Recovery for Mac to recover data from an external hard drive on Mac: [SOLVED] How To Recover Deleted Files On Mac | Complete Guide. But the free edition of this software only allows you to detect and check files. In order to complete the data recovery process, you need to get a registered edition.

External Hard Drive Not Showing on Windows 7

"Hello guys, I have a problem. Whenever I plug in my external hard drive (1TB Maxtor) in my pc, it doesn't show up. It has always been working, but since I installed Windows 7 yesterday it doesn't work anymore. So it HAS to be something to do with Windows 7. Does anyone know any solution? Please help me, because all my documents are stored on this external hard drive and I need them on this pc. Thanks". - PimjongSevenForums

Pim said that his external hard drive works well until he has installed Windows 7 the day before. Now, this drive doesn’t show up when he plugs it into the computer. On this occasion, he should go to the Windows Disk Management tool to check whether the external hard drive appears in this place or not. Then, decide to recover data at first or try to fix the error directly.

Chapter 2: 7 Ways to Fix External Hard Drive Doesn’t Appear

After the investigation, we find external HDD not detected problem is mainly caused by the following seven reasons. And we give the corresponding countermeasures for each case. You can try them one by one no matter whether you want to find an external hard drive on a Mac or a Windows system.

1. Assign/change a drive letter

When a drive letter is missing, the corresponding hard drive will not appear on the computer. Besides, when there’s a conflict between the external hard drive letter and the local drive letter, it will not show up on the computer, either.

At this time, you only need to assign a drive letter to your external hard drive or change a letter for it to solve the problem. You can adopt both the built-in disk management tool and the third-party manager like MiniTool Partition Wizard to accomplish this task.

2. Reinstall/Update the USB driver

Sometimes, the driver of your external hard drive may be corrupted or outdated, so you need to reinstall or update the USB driver to solve the problem.

How to reinstall USB driver: open Device Manager in your favorite way > expand Disk drives > select your external hard drive > right-click on it > choose Uninstall device from the context menu -> click on Uninstall in the pop-up confirm window.

As for how to update the USB driver, the steps are similar. You should also open Device Manager and find your external hard drive. But after that, you should choose Update Driver. Of course, you can choose to disable and re-enable the USB controller to have a try.

3. Power on the external hard drive

If your external hard drive is not provided with a sufficient power supply, it can’t show up on the computer. This is a common phenomenon.

Under such circumstances, you should power on the external hard drive which has its own power switch or separate power cable.

4. Don’t use USB hubs

The reason why we advise you to avoid USB hub is also related to power supply. Some USB hubs are not able to provide enough power supply to the external hard drive. In contrast, you should plug the external hard drive directly into one of your computer’s USB ports.

5. Try a different USB port or computer

When the USB port on the computer that you have used to connect your external hard drive is dead, you can’t see the drive on the computer no matter what you do. Besides, when the system driver of your computer has problems, you will fail to see the external hard drive on this computer anyhow.

You should try a different USB port or computer in this case to exclude the problem.

6. Repair the system’s built-in drivers

• Press F8 or another button to enter the safe mode during the boot process, select restart or shutdown the computer, and power on it later to enter the normal mode (to repair the registry).
• If the problem persists, perform a system restore in order to restore your system to an earlier point when there’s no such problem.
• If the problem persists, please use the system disk to repair it. Open the command prompt, enter SFC / scannow, press Enter, and insert the original system disk to repair the system automatically.
• If the problem persists, please set the CD-ROM as the first boot device in the BIOS; then, insert the system installation disc and press the R key to select repair installation.
• If the problem still persists, we advise you to reinstall your OS.

7. Set parameters in CMOS

For people who have never used USB external devices on their current computer, even if they have installed the driver properly, the system still cannot detect USB hard disks. This is because the CMOS port of the motherboard is closed by default.

At this time, you should set it as enabled: reboot to enter the CMOS settings window > find PNP/PCI CONFIGURATION > make Legacy USB Support enabled (different computers are slightly different in terms of expression).

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What if you find files are not showing up on external hard drive after you get the disk shown on the computer? Please don’t panic; MiniTool Power Data Recovery could also help. And as for how to fix the problem when the hard drive won’t show up on Mac, please refer to this post.

Chapter 3: Summary

Believe it or not, the external hard drive doesn’t appear is not a rare problem; it bothers a lot of computer users. Since this problem is very complex, we can’t ensure that you can fix the error by using the ways we mentioned here. But we strongly suggest that you should first recover files from external hard drive with MiniTool Power Data Recovery/MiniTool Mac Data Recovery. Then, try the methods one by one to see if your problem can be fixed properly or not.

Please feel free to leave a short message below if you have any questions and contact us when have trouble using MiniTool software via [email protected].