Media go does not see the external hard drive. Why the computer does not see the external hard drive

External HDD used to store data. If the system does not recognize it when connected to a PC, the cable may not be connected correctly, drivers were not installed automatically, free space was not allocated, or a malfunction occurred software. Also, do not forget about the physical failure of the disk. Therefore, in order to solve this problem, it is worth reconnecting the removable drive or HDD and SSD correctly and finding out why the system stopped seeing it.

Troubleshooting an external hard drive

There are times when the system does not recognize the HDD or SSD due to the fact that the . In this case, it is necessary to check the correctness of the firmware settings, reconnect the hard drive, and only then test other methods.

On Windows 10, if the laptop does not see external hard drive, the troubleshooting steps are as follows:

• Press "Win + R" and enter "diskmgmt.msc".

• The Disk Management utility will open. It will display information about all connected drives, images, and virtual disks. If your computer does not see an external hard drive and you do not know what to do on Windows 10, it is worth looking to see if there is a “Missing data, not initialized” or “Unallocated” indication.
• You need to right-click on the disk and select "Format". Next, you need to select the context menu again and select "Initialize".

• A small window will open. Here you need to set the partition structure. For Windows 10 it's GPT.

• An unallocated area will appear. Need to do new section. Right-click on the drive and select "Create Simple Volume".

• On Windows 10, the "Create Simple Volume Wizard" will start, following the prompts of which you need to set the volume letter (so that this does not exist on the PC), specify the size and click "OK".

If after performing this action Windows system 10 does not see an external hard drive, you should use the Diskpart utility.

IMPORTANT! If you are an inexperienced PC user and have not established the exact reason for the display of an external hard drive, we do not recommend resorting to this method. All data from the disk will be ERASED!

• We carefully study the volume of the disk.
• We launch command line with Administrator rights.
• Enter the following commands:

• Determine which disk is not displayed. We remember its letter.

select disk X - where X is the drive letter of a non-mapped drive.

clean - disk cleaning.

create partition primary (it is possible to set size=S, the size of the partition in MB, if several partitions are required).

format fs=ntfs quick

assign letter=D - where D is the letter that we assign to the problem disk.

If even after performing these steps, the external drive does not become visible, it is worth checking it for operability and the presence of bad sectors.

Hello! A system backup has been written on an external drive (Toshiba). After reinstalling the disk is no longer detected. In the "Computer Management" window, the disk is visible, but the letter cannot be assigned - an error window appears. I do not want to format, so as not to lose all the data on it.

/ Vitaly Vladimirovich 07/26/2017, 08:01

I'll try to help your grief. Open a command prompt as an administrator and enter the following commands in sequence:

diskpart --> Enter

list volume -->Enter

A list of disks that are visible in the system will appear. You choose your drive, which is not assigned a letter and focusing on its size. For example:

select volume 4 --> Enter

It will look something like this:

After the desired disk is selected, enter the command:

assign letter=R-- assign the letter R to that

If the letter assignment was successful, the corresponding message will be displayed:

Diskpart: Disk name or mount point assigned successfully.

This method almost always works.

/ Vitaly Vladimirovich 07/27/2017, 08:33

What I see in your screenshot does not look like a connected external drive, but a connected card reader. This is indicated by the size (0 bytes) and the fact that there are four of them (H, I, J, K). At least that's how it is on my other computer. If I insert a memory card into some slot of the card reader, its volume appears in this window.

I connected my external drive, see what it shows:

We see that it has a size of 1 terabyte.

What do you advise? There is good way. You download from an Internet TestDisk Live CD. It is based on one of operating systems based on LINUX. You open the file manager there and look at what is written on your external drive. If you see something, you save it to another location, and then you format this disk in Windows. It's hard to draw any conclusions remotely.

walter / 28.07.2017, 11:20

Is it worth it? On the second (other) computer, the disk is visible, opens, i.e. works as it should! It's easier to format it there (without the Test Disk Live CD). But the question is: will it be visible later on the first one? Or is it better to format with this program (on the first computer)?

/ Vitaly Vladimirovich 07/28/2017, 09:03

I was confused by your screenshot:

It can't possibly be a removable disk. Some glitch in the system. In such a situation, you can use the USB Oblivion program. It is designed to erase traces of connecting USB drives from the registry in the Windows OS family. The utility has a test mode of operation, that is, without actually deleting data from the registry, and, just in case, creates a reg file to undo all changes. There is also a fully automatic mode of operation. I think the work of this utility will help in your problem.

If, when you connect an external hard drive, your computer does not display its icon, does not react to the usb port in any way, and does not show the contents of the disk, then there may be several reasons. Often, your device simply does not have updated drivers or they simply do not exist for this model of external hard drive. There is also a failure in the performance of the disk until the owner formats it - this is also not a rare case. To solve the task, you do not have to download additional software or third-party programs, since all debugging can be done using the built-in Windows tools. In this article, you will learn how to detect an external hard drive on your computer and view its contents.

Why the computer does not see the external hard drive - debugging in Computer Management

There can be many reasons for not detecting an external drive, and many of them are solved in the Computer Management environment. Here you can format the drive, change its letter, see how it behaves.

• Go to the Start panel, and then to the "Control Panel".

• Select the "System and Security" category, if you do not see such categories as in the screenshot below, then put the categories in the upper right corner. The display will change to something like this.

• Now click on "Administration" highlighted in green.

• In the window that opens, find the "Computer Management" service. Click on it twice.

• Once the window opens, go to the Disk Management tab.

• Here you will see all the disks that the computer sees at this stage. If your drive is not displayed here at all, then it is better to skip to the third section of this article, as the problem lies in the drivers. If the disk is visible, but it is defined incorrectly, then try to change its letter.

• Right-click on the drive, select "Change drive letter or drive path" from the drop-down list.

• Wait a few seconds for a small new window to open. In it, click on the "Add" button.

• Assign a new drive letter in the first step. You can change it to any other, try not to choose letters that are close to the current one in the alphabet.
• Click OK to save your changes and exit the window.

Why the computer does not see the external hard drive - formatting

If the disk designation is visible, but it does not react in any way to your actions, and the device is not recognized in principle, then it remains to format the device. In doing so, it will be reset and debugged, but you will lose all data from this external drive.

• Return to the "Computer Management" service and the "Disk Management" section. Select the desired device, right-click on it and select the "Format" line.

• Formatting will not take long, you can continue to use your computer as usual.
• Check the box next to "Quick Format" and click "OK". Wait a while, insert the drive into the slot again and see what has changed.

Why the computer does not see the external hard drive - updating drivers

The most common reason for the failure of one or another component in the computer is the loss, breakdown or lack of device drivers. To update the drivers to the correct ones, follow the instructions below:

• Go to the Control Panel through Computer Start.
• Select the "Hardware and Sound" section.

• In this section, you need a new section "Devices and Printers".
• In the subsections for this item you will find the desired "Device Manager".

• In Device Manager, you can see all the devices on your computer.
• Open the Disk Drives tab.
• In it you will see your external hard drive.

• Right-click on it and select Update Driver Software.
• Wait for the installation to finish.

Your drivers will be updated and external hard drive detection issues will be resolved.