Spacious, portable, fast, and affordable – external hard drives do it all. It comes as no surprise that they’re overwhelmingly used for everything from backups to data transfer. But it’s not all rainbows and sunshine.
Most people have had a hard drive or two fail on them, but this time, we’ve got you covered. We’ve compiled all the main reasons why an External Hard Drive may not show up on your PC, as well as how to get it working again.
Why is the External Hard Drive Not Showing Up?
How to Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing Up?
As usual, reboot your PC first. Regardless of whether a hardware or software issue is causing this problem, a simple restart can be enough to solve it sometimes. This is rare, but the OS can take a few minutes to mount the drive, especially in lower-spec systems. So wait for a bit.
Next, disconnect any unnecessary peripheral devices. Connect the HDD using different ports and cables to verify if afaulty portor cable is the issue. If these didn’t help, you should move on to the solutions listed below.
Check Physical Components
First things first, check for any LEDs or sound to ensure the HDD is actually working and there’s no physical damage. If you hear a clicking sound (click of death) coming from the hard drive, the drive is likely dead.
Next, check for any bent or otherwise damaged pins and verify the integrity of the USB Ports. Additionally, you should also access the BIOS setup utility and ensure that there are no issues with the power output of the USB Port.
Troubleshoot via Disk Management
A lot of users have reported that the hard drive shows up in Disk Management but not in File Explorer. This happens most of the time because thedrive is uninitialized.
In this case, you may bring the drive online, initialize it, create a new volume, and then format it to resolve the issue.
If you may’t afford to lose the data, we recommend using theChange Drive Letter and Pathsoption to assign a drive letter manually, as this alone can solve the problem at times.
Since the drive is at least accessible via Disk Management, we also recommend using the Hardware and Device troubleshooter before trying the solutions below. you may run this tool automatically by executing the following command in CMD:msdt.exe -id DeviceDiagnostic
Update Device Driver and System
