External Hard Drive Doesn’t Show Up on Computer

Attached USB Hard Disk Doesn’t Appear in "My Computer"?

Problem1: Hello! This morning, I plunged my 560GB WD external hard drive to my laptop as usual and wondered to upload some newly transferred videos to my computer partitions. However, this hard drive did not appear in "My Computer" as before. What am I supposed to now?

Problem2: Hey, guys! I do have purchased a Seagate portable hard drive that has been used only for several months. And it always works fine. However, yesterday, when trying to adding some movies to this hard drive, I just unplugged this drive out from my computer before ejection. And then, hours latter, when I tried to go on the data transformation, it just didn’t show up on my computer strangely. Even now, I still cannot access anything inside that drive. Please, help me show this drive up again. Thanks!  

Hello, friends! Hello, friends! Is this external hard drive a really new one? Is it the first time to use it on this laptop? If not, here are several simple steps that can help you show this drive in "My Computer" again.

Step1: Unplug This External Hard Drive & Try It Again

Sometimes, the connected external harddrives often cannot be detected or shown up in any place of your computer for loose or broken connection. So, unplug this USB hard disk and try it on the same computer again. And then, check whether it is shown normally in "My Computer". If not, also disconnect this drive and try it on a different computer to test whether it is the problem of your computer. But, if you still can not find it in "My Computer", also do not panic. Just follow the below steps.

Step2: Open Disk Management to Check the Drive State

Though your USB hard drive now doesn’t show up as usual now, it doesn’t indicate your external hard drive is seriously damaged or failed. Simply follow the listed steps and check whether this drive is still workable. And now, just open the disk and check whether your connected drive is detected well there. Is it allocated with a normal drive letter there? Is it shown as RAW there? Or is it unallocated or not initialized there? Generally, in this moment, the different state of this hard drive in Disk Management often requires different solutions.

Step3: Assign a New Drive Letter

If this external hard drive has not been allocated with an abnormal disk letter in Disk Management, the following thing for you now is to immediately assign a drive letter for it. Simply right click this hard drive there and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths…". And specify your attached hard drive out to press "Add" and then, type in your desired drive letter to finish the letter adding process. And, at last, open "My computer" to see whether your drive is back there.

Step4: Format This Hard Drive

But, if the adding or changing a drive letter also makes no difference in fixing this hard disk issues or this harddrive is show as RAW, not initialized or unallocated in Disk Management, you’d better format this hard disk there and see whether the formatting process can let this drive show up again. Merely, right click this disk there and choose "Format" option to go on.

Step5. Get Expert Insight if It Is Possible

But, if the final formatting process also cannot help repair this external hard drive completely, you may get some troublesome drive issues. Simply send it to some professional drive repairing agencies and get some expert insight, if it is possible for you.

Important Tips for You:

1). Back up all important USB drive contents elsewhere as soon as possible.

In case that you will mistakenly format this USB hard disk or delete something important off from this portable hard disk accidentally, you’d better immediately find and prepare two or more drives or devices to make the drive data backups well. It is always useful to avoid unexpected data loss troubles by preparing several drive data backups well in advance. 

2). Recover Lost external hard drive data after mistakenly formatting drive without data backups.

Of course, if you do have formatted this external hard drive to make it show up again and also found your original drive photos, videos, files and more are also gone, do not worry too much. Stop writing or moving anything else on this drive to damage the original data and download external hard drive format recovery software to recover all possible information back. With right data recovery software, you always can easily take precious drive photos, documents, movies, songs and the likes back within several simple clicks.

3). Directly format or partition this portable hard drive if it is a brand new drive.

If your portable hard drive is a completely new drive and has not been used on any electronic device yet, it is common to find it is not shown on any place of your computer. Simple format or partition it on your computer to manually activate it there. 

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