7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized?

This Is How to Fix It in Windows

WINDOWS

External Drive Not

Recognized? This Is How to Fix
It in Windows
By Chris Ho man / October 21, 2013 21-10-2013 / 5 minutes

Chris Hoffman
350 articles

Chris Ho man is a tech

blogger and all-around
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Stumbleupon technology addict living in
Email Vancouver, BC. Connect with
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External drives — either USB flash drives or external hard drives —

should be easy to use. In some cases, you may connect your drive to a
Windows PC or another device with a USB port and find that it’s not
recognized. This problem can be caused by partition issues on your
external drive, using the wrong file system, dead USB ports, driver
issues in Windows, or other problems. In a worst case scenario, the
drive itself may simply be dead.

The steps below will be the same for both USB flash drives and larger
external hard drives, which work similarly.

This guide is also available as a video:

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7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How to Fix It in Windows

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First, let’s check whether Windows detects the drive when you plug it
in. Plug your removable drive into your computer. If it’s an external
hard drive, you may have to flip a power switch on the hard drive to
activate it. Some heavy-duty removable hard drives may even have to
be plugged in with a separate power cable before they’ll work.

Next, open the Disk Management tool. To do so, press Windows Key +
R, type diskmgmt.msc into the Run dialog, and press Enter.
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You should see your external drive listed in the Disk Management Advertisement
window. Even if it doesn’t appear in your Computer window because it
doesn’t contain any partitions, it should show up here.

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7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How to Fix It in Windows

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If you do see the drive here, you can continue to the last section where That Will Make Your
we’ll format it properly so Windows or your other devices can access Life Much Easier
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If you don’t see the drive here, continue to the next section where we’ll Check If Local Stores
try to determine why your drive isn’t recognized. Are Open Using
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If Windows doesn’t see your drive at all, it’s possible there’s a hardware Crime Podcasts
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Windwos computer, or you may just have a dead drive.
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First, unplug the drive from your USB port and try plugging it into
another USB port on your computer. If it works in one USB port but not
another, you may have a dead USB port. If you’ve plugged the drive
into a USB hub, try connecting it to the computer instead. Some USB
hubs won’t provide enough power for your external drive to function.

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7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How to Fix It in Windows

If the drive doesn’t show up in Disk Management even a er you skip

the USB hub and connect it to another USB port on your computer, it’s
tough to know for certain whether the drive itself is bad or the Related Articles
computer is having a problem. If you have another computer nearby,
MAC
try plugging the drive in there to check whether it’s detected. If the
Solving the “Read
drive doesn’t work on any computer you plug it into — be sure to check Only” External Hard
whether it appears in the computer’s Disk Management window — the Drive Problem on
drive itself is likely dead and will need to be replaced. Your Mac

If the drive does work on other computers — or you don’t have another BUYING GUIDES
computer around to test this with — Windows may be having a driver The 8 Best Portable
problem with the drive. You can check for this using the Device Hard Drives You Can
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To open it, press Windows Key + R, type “devmgmt.msc” into the Run WINDOWS

dialog, and press Enter. How to Set Up a

Second Hard Drive in
Windows:
Partitioning

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Look under Disk drives and check for any devices with a yellow
plan at a great price
exclamation mark next to them. If you see a yellow exclamation mark,
you have a driver problem. Right-click the device with a yellow
exclamation mark, select Properties, and look at the error message. Free Quote
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perform a Google search for the error message you find.

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7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How to Fix It in Windows

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Such problems can be tricky to fix. If the problem started recently, you
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may want to run System Restore. You may want to use the Update
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driver and configure it correctly when you reconnect the drive.
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7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How to Fix It in Windows

Partitioning and Formatting the Drive

We can use the Windows Disk Management tool to fix partition and file
system issues with the drive. If you see that the drive is unpartitioned
and is full of “unallocated space,” you’ll want to create a new partition
on it. This will allow Windows and other operating systems to use it.

To do so, right-click inside the unallocated space, select New Simple

Volume, and go through the wizard to create a new partition.

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7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How to Fix It in Windows

If your drive is partitioned and you still can’t see it, ensure you’ve set a
drive letter so you can access it in Windows. This should happen
automatically, but if you’ve manually unset the drive letter, the drive
may not show up and be accessible in Windows.

To do this, right-click the removable drive’s partition, select Change

Drive Letter and Paths, and add a drive letter. For example, add the
letter G: and the removable drive will be accessible at drive G:.

If the drive does appear to be partitioned, it may be partitioned with

the wrong file system. For example, you may have formatted the drive
with the ext4 file system from Linux or the HFS Plus file system from a
Mac. Windows can’t read these file systems. Reformat the drive with
the newer NTFS file system or older FAT32 file system so Windows will
be able to recognize it.

To reformat a partition, right-click it, select Format, and select your

desired file system.

Note that this will erase all the files on your drive, so you’ll want to
copy any important files o of it first — for example, if you formatted
the drive on a Linux or Mac computer, take it back to a computer
running Linux or Mac and copy your important files o of it before
continuing.

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7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How to Fix It in Windows

If you can’t access the drive from another device, such as a DVD player,
smart TV, game console, or media center device, it may be formatted
as NTFS. Many devices, even Microso ’s own Xbox 360, can’t read the
Windows NTFS file system. They can only access drives formatted with
the older FAT32 file system. To fix this problem, simply reformat the
NTFS partition as FAT32. The drive should then be recognized by other
devices when you connect it to them.

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Note that this process will erase the files on your external drive. Copy
the files o the drive to back them up first, if necessary.

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7/13/2017 External Drive Not Recognized? This Is How to Fix It in Windows

Following this process should solve most of the disk recognition issues
you’ll encounter. If a drive isn’t recognized by any computer you
connect it to and never shows up in the Disk Management window, it’s
probably dead.

Have you ever had to do any of the things here to fix an unrecognized
external drive? Leave a comment and let us know what worked for
you!

Image Credit: Vincent Wei on Flickr

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