What to do if your external hard drive does not show in my computer

I have also recently found a problem with my Buffalo 500G external drive. This drive has no independent power supply. It does not show on my desktop PC.

Luckily, I found my solution: the USB cable is bugged. Change to a new USB cable perfectly works.

Thanks alot dude

Thanks! You saved my life! <3!!!!

Drive not show up on My Computer!!

I have a promblem with my Lacie 1TB external disk. I plug it in and its shows up on the "Safely Remove" but its not shows up in "My Computer". I also try out the way with the "Disk Management" but i cant click on the option "Change driveletter"...can any1 help me with something else please?

See if this might help How to Cleanup and Remove old USB Storage Drivers

If still the problem, click Start->Run, enter diskmgmt.msc (for Disk Manager)

When you connect/remove the drive does a new disk # appear (and disappear) in the lower pane?

Does this new disk show its formatted NTFS? or FAT? or does is say something like RAW or Unformatted? or something else?

When i connet the device and i got into Disk Manager i can see it there but on the "File System" colloum its empy..no NTFS..nothing

In that case, i'd guess the file system is corrupted and Windows no longer detects it. (Did you unplug the USB cable without first using the Safely Remove Hardware icon?)

In any case, try TestDisk. Many have used it and reported good results (it'll attempt to recover the filesystem and your files)

p.s. do NOT write anything to that drive till you've done recovery

External Hard drive does not even show up in the disk management

ok, not computer savvy, AT ALL, but attempted steps as described, still nothing shows up in disc management other than the internal hard drives. Tried same steps on two other computers, same same. unplugged/replugged external hard drives power source (plugs into wall surge protector) and tried other USB ports on same and other computers...nothing; attached new USB chords...nothing. External hard drive lights up as if it should be operational and seems to be faintly clicking, to the touch (can't hear any noise really). Device will not turn off no matter how long you hold down the power button. Also tried just restarting and then totally shutting down the computers...nothing still. Never been on a forum previously, for anything, had lots of pictures on there that can't be replaced, I know...I'm dumb for not backing them up somewhere else. Please, help!

Hi blueyes

If you still can't get the disk to appear in Disk Management and you've had the same problem plugging even after connecting it into different computers, is likely a hardware problem with the external drive

Those external drives essentially conisist of two components: the case which has the disk inside it and the disk itself. Sometimes its the connections on the case itself which fail. The disk inside may still be OK

That would mean opening the case, removing the disk and connecting it to a USB adapter cable or putting it in a new case. All of which isn't too hard (if you've done it before) See this thread as an example. On the other hand, you might want to take it somewhere to let a shop do it for you if you're not sure if you can do so yourself

help

i followed the disk management instructions but i cant assign a drive letter and theres nothing in the file system, no ntfs or fat or anything

Still a problem....

The disk management shows that your disk(disk 2) is not initialised annd when I try to initialize it, it says that the requested sector was not found....!! I'm bamboozled.... Help please

no option to change number???

hello, ive tried going into the disk management to change the letter as it was not showing up on my computer and the hard drive in the list did say not initialised ive now done that an now it says unallocated and it doesn't give me the option to change the number, only help, properties and new partition should i set up a primary or extended partition, please help

i'm having the exact same problem did you find an answer please help

You're talking about an external USB drive, right? If it now says "unallocated" then you next want to create a partition. You can right click select New Partition and create the partition. I'm guessing the drive will just be for your data? So make it any partition type should be OK.

Right click on my computer
Choose MANAGE
Then find DISK MANAGEMENT
You should see your ext hard drive under the list.
Right click on it, and choose "NEW SIMPLE Drive", click "Next".
CHANGE DRIVE LETTER,and format. It should show up in Your Computer.
Choose anything, but I recommend something higher than M:

You Must Click: "New Simple Drive" ...
... or you will not get to the option to change Drive Letters & Format

Hope This Helps, I just did it & worked like a charm !

Blessings All;
Chaz Tucker

:O

Thank you SO much your a life saver bro.

I am Pleased to have been able to help out.
After reading the whole post about this problem, i started to investigate it.
I wondered why no one mentioned anything about the "New Simple Drive" option ?
So I gave it a try, and it was indeed the fix I was after !
After I succeeded, I joined TECHSPOT, and posted what I had discovered.


Rock On !
Chaz T.

Works with exFAT drive

I was hoping that I could use my Western Digital jump drive for external storage with my XBOX. It does not accept NTFS, so I reformatted it with exFAT. The XBOX did not like it, so I wanted to reformat it back to NTFS. When I plugged in the USB cable, the computer did not show up in Explorer. It did show up in Computer Management>>Disk Drives, and when I told it to update driver software, it said it was current.

My computer drive configuration is:
C: - primary
D: - recovery
E: - CD/ROM
F: - separate drive for misc files (music, video, photos)

I used your solution and reassigned the F: drive to L: (any letter will do here). When I plugged the USB drive back in, it did not show up in Explorer but was in Computer Management as an unallocated drive. Here I could reformat back to NTFS. Thanks a bunch!!!

testdisk question

testdisk works great but i have over 1tb of files on this ext hd and i don't know if i'll have the room for all of the files cuz my laptop's c drive only has 102gb (before copying the files) i just installed win 7.

I cannot seem to do anything. The choices are grey'd out.

Can someone please help me with this??

I have taken a screen shot but because this is my first post on this forum, I am not allowed to post links or images.

Please do the math:

[ I M G ] http : / / i42. tinypic. com / dnc3vb.jpg [ / IMG ]

Hi ktpierce and welcome to TechSpot :wave:

Based on the lower pane in your snapshot Disk 2 must the one your talking about. Note it shows 2 partitions
> The first is 200MB and indicates its the EFI System Partition
> The second is 297GB of unallocated space!

1. I googled EFI System Partition. It's used by some machines/devices but as it's only 200MB (quite small in size) I'd leave it as is (instead of trying to figure out if you really need it and/or what it does)
2. The rest of the disk needs to be allocated before it can be assigned a drive letter and used. Rt click on the Unallocated and check your choices. http://ask-leo.com/how_do_i_use_an_unallocated_space_partition_in_windows_7.html

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p.s. and CLICK HERE for ktpierces's link if anyone else is looking