Windows 7: My External Hard Drive Isn't Recognized

To do this by disk Management go to start, right click computer, then click manage, then click Disk Management on the panel, right click the external drive, then click "change drive letter and paths" then if its blank click ad if it has a drive letter click remove and then add then resign it a letter on the drop down menu, OK and close all that then check.

Try that before the tweak stuff if fails then do it.



Sorry for the random order of things am new to here.

I can't change the letter of the drive through disk manager but ill try the software out.

Why cant you?

If you can't do it via Disk Manager, you have an issue with your computer

If you have another disk to where you could copy the data, I would use a Linux distro (e.g. a live Ubuntu) to copy it. Then you can initialize and reformat the stubborn disk.

can you explain this a little bit more. I'm not really familiar with linux.

ATM.... i'm running getbackdata for NTFS and it seems to be working. Its reading sectors and approxs 5hrs til its done. So hopefully I will get everything back.

I had a similar problem with my external hdd. This is what fixed mine. In search type in Computer management. When that opens go to Disk Management. When that opens it should show a graphic, similar to Partition Wizard. In my case it showed "Disk 1", but no assigned Drive Letter, and this was the problem. I right clicked that graphic and the option of "Change drive letter path........." appears. I selected a drive letter and closed it. All worked fine after that. I probably did a restart just to make sure the changes were picked up. I sure hope this works for you.

When I attempt this, I right click on my external hard drive and everything is greyed-out except "Help" and "Delete Volume"

I was referring to a facility like this ( Computer First Aid Using Knoppix ). But many times people prefer an Ubuntu version that you run from a live CD (= bootable CD) like this ( Download | Ubuntu ).

*Found Solution*: GetDataBack for NTFS

This saved me tons of stress and money. It found my drive and was able to find all my files and transfer them over successfully (Over 220gbs, but took like 10hrs). I highly recommend this. This program is also able to find files on corrupted hard drives, and able to find deleted files. Its a great program.

For the GetDataBack for NTFS, did you have to buy it or did you use their trial version?