External Hard Drive Not Detected

[marsmimar]

I believe the casing is playing a part in this issue. To try to draw an analogy (maybe a bad one) it's kinda, sorta like the electrical system of a car. You know you've got battery power because the headlights come on. But the thing won't start. No matter what you do with the battery, no matter how many wires you change out, it just won't start. Why? Because the starter shorted out.

Applying that logic to the casing, the USB cable is providing power from the computer to the LED because the LED lights up. But at some point beyond the LED, something in the circuitry is messed up and not allowing the drive to be recognized or accessed. A new enclosure might solve the problem providing the hard drive itself wasn't compromised in some way.

 

[CosmicSuperstar]

Makes sense to me. Ok, so the last resort left now is to try another Casing. Will do that as soon as possible. But if it turns out that the disk doesn't start functioning with another casing also, then is there any way for reviving the disk or would it then be logical to throwaway the drive in the garbage-bin?

But first things first, I'll now revert back after checking it with another casing.

Thanks a ton for your time & patience

Cheers!

 

[marsmimar]

Hopefully a new case will solve the problem. If it doesn't (and unfortunately that possibility does exist) then whether you keep the drive or toss it would probably depend on what data, if any, it contains. Professional data recovery services could charge hundreds of dollars and go up from there.

If loss of data isn't a problem for you I'd physically destroy the drive and plan on getting a new external USB drive. Prices have come way down and it's pretty much the norm to be able to get a new (not refurbished) name brand 2TB drive for about $100 (or less on sale.)

Newegg.com - external usb hard drive 2 tb

Looking forward to hear how it goes with a new enclosure.

 

[CosmicSuperstar]

Checked the casing....it's good. It's the Seagate drive which has gone bad The disc is not even rotating. I won't mind tossing it coz it has nothing other than 70GB of my music library backup. Yeah, next time I buy an external drive it will be a 2TB one only...thanks for the suggestion and all the help. I guess we can close the *case* now (pun intended)

Cheers!

 

[marsmimar]

Sorry to hear the drive isn't salvageable, but on the bright side you were able to figure out what the problem was. At least it gave "closure" to this "case" (like you, pun intended. )

 

[TheAgeOfSteam]

More of the same but different

I had this same issue and it was driving me crazy!! I checked everything I could think of!! Until I thought I would check it out in the computer management..
Go to:
Control Panel
Admin tools
Computer management
Disk management
And sure enough there were my drives that I couldn't access. I had to right click on the drive header and select 'Online'
And now sure enough I see all my drives in the 'Computer'

G'day All, good to see I'm not the only one with this problem, This one is a WD 1 TB (WD10EADS). IT WAS WORKING FINE FOR A NUMBER OF MONTHS WHEN THE SON ASKED IF HE COULD (opps, sorry bout the caps lock) use it. after a time he brought it out and asked me to look at it as it would not load on his computer. I have tried external hock up, and opened the plastic case and hocked it up internal via SATA connections. Both times it will spin up but the system will not see it to read. rebooted a couple of times and still nothing. Any help would be appreciated as I'm behind the 8 ball here.
Cheers and thanks in advance.

Michael.

 

[TheAgeOfSteam]

Second posting

G'day all again,

Just an up date as I've just read the posts between Marsmimar and Cosmicsuperstar.

1. running win 7 32 bit.
2. light on drive case flashes at regular intervals when plugged into a USB port.
3. have just finished running CHKDSK on 2 different hard drives from my sons computer and both ran fine on internal cables. have used same cables to connect the faulty unit.
4. have tried faulty unit on a number of different computers with the same result.

Heres hoping this can be fixed.

Michael.

 

[Sempronia]

What exactly did you do re: explorer.exe?

I'm having the same problems that you are having with one exception. My external HDs worked just fine until I upgraded to Windows 7 Ultimate from Windows 7 Pro. I also bought a new 500 GB HD for backups, but it will not work. I want what I paid for, and Microsoft is guilty as hell for false advertising.

Sorry for the rant! What steps did you take with explorer.exe--and did they work? Thanks

 

[BigMinge]

Hi guys. I have Win 7ultimate x64. I have new portable HD that is getting reconized, but i can't put anything in there or use it. This is the HD Speed Dragon All that comes up is a number for it. I can see it in the hidden icons, but it's not showing up in the "computer" section. I.e. i can see C: drive and other hd's i have used previously. It's USB 3.0, if that makes any difference. Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[StarTrust]

My headaches are gone

My headaches are gone, your tip has ferfect also works with me, had previously tried a system restore, even with my backup software.

Thank so much

I had this same issue and it was driving me crazy!! I checked everything I could think of!! Until I thought I would check it out in the computer management..
Go to:
Control Panel
Admin tools
Computer management
Disk management
And sure enough there were my drives that I couldn't access. I had to right click on the drive header and select 'Online'
And now sure enough I see all my drives in the 'Computer'

 

[shepk9]

Just wanted to follow up on this. The issue I was having was windows stopped assigning drive letters to usb hdd's.

Using disk management, if I manually assigned the drive letter, the drive would appear and function normally.

Great thread, had the info I needed to solved this problem I've been having for months. Thanks guys.

 

[Maximo1561]

SOLUTION - USB External Drive Not Recognized

I have experienced a USB external hard drive that is not recognized in "Computer" and is therefore not accessible. The drive does appear normally in Device Manager. Sometimes an external drive which has been in normal use shifts into this situation. In my case the drive appeared to have lost its "designation".

Other brands of USB external hard drive plugged into the computer are also not recognized, but flash drives are recognized.

The external hard drive appears normally and works when plugged into other computers.

To recapture the drive designation on the computer experiencing the problem -
Go to Contol Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management. In my case the drive appeared, but has no designation letter. I right clicked on the "blank" drive and then
selected "Make Drive Active" and "Change Drive Letter and Paths". That seems to resolve the problem.

 

[bernd]

Hello, I have the same problem. the external drive is shown in Disk management as Online burt Explorer does not show it. It works with other laptops perfectly. It cannot be the port because other external HDDs will show up as usual. Any other suggestion what to do?

 

[DeAnimal]

HDD shows 0 media, can't access - SOLUTION

Hi all, I know this post is really old but I've recently found a solution. My HDD (from all in one pc) randomly stopped and wouldn't boot. Well, I was using Audacity to normalize music tracks, and it was importing them all, so I let it run overnight. Then next day the drive had and I/O error and wouldn't boot. I removed it and connected to my laptop as an external drive with USB cable. I could see the drive in explorer and drive manager but it showed 0 media and had no options available. Following instructions on various forums I tried assigning drive letter Z, no change. And everything short of putting it in the freezer ( I didn't try this as all advice was, it would only be temporary fix). From everything I read, my drive was dead and not worth saving.
But I have important info on there and don't wish to pay thousands to retrieve it. Being a rather determined person, I pulled apart another PC and installed the drive with SATA to run the windows repair disk (the original pc didn't have CD Rom) sadly windows couldn't repair it. I tried several partition and file recovery programs. Some couldn't see the drive, others saw it but couldn't access it. Then I thought to try something else. I found instructions here: Windows 7 - Create a system repair USB key to create a windows 7 repair USB> So I put my drive back in it's PC, changed the BIOS to boot from USB first. The BIOS could see the drive, so it wasn't dead! In Windows repair I went to command prompt and typed in
DISKPART
then LIST DISK - and it was there, not 0 but full size! and online
then LIST VOL - and I could see the original partitions
SELECT VOL 0 (whichever one you need)
ACTIVE (to make it usable)
then I tried to format - did this several times, each time I lost the drive and it couldn't format. DON"T DO THIS I found a better way. So after you make it ACTIVE
ASSIGN - (to give it a name. no extras just ASSIGN)
EXIT - then exit repair. Shut down the PC.
Remove the drive and install as external on another machine.
AMAZING!! it now shows up and windows says "you must format this drive to use it". Well that's ok, because you can recover the data after format.
I used Stellar Phoenix but there are many others. It takes for ever!!but it's a 1TB drive. And I stopped it into the meta file search as I could see it was going to take days (which I don't have). And there was all my files.
I just want to say...Don't give up, they may tell you the drive is dead, but it may not be.