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Backing up your data is important. Storing information in the cloud has become second nature to most, but there’s still nothing like having everything saved on a physical device. External drives are simple: You plug them in, they appear on your computer, and you can drag files over. But what happens when your drive doesn’t appear when you plug it into your computer?
There could be a number of reasons why your storage device isn’t showing up. If the drive has died with all your data on it, you might have a problem. But don’t panic just yet. Here are a few troubleshooting steps you can take before you declare everything is lost.
1. Make Sure It’s Plugged In and Powered On
Western Digital My Book (Credit: Western Digital)
Just because you plugged the drive into your computer doesn’t mean it’s necessarily receiving the power it needs. While some drives can draw enough power from your computer’s USB port, others—especially larger drives not intended to be portable, like the Western Digital My Book—may require wall power to spin up. If your drive came with an AC power adapter but you haven’t plugged it in, try hooking it up (and pressing the power button, if there is one). If it came with two USB plugs, make sure they’re both plugged into your PC. With any luck, your drive will appear normally once it gets the juice it needs.
2. Reboot Your Computer
Have you tried turning it off and on again? It’s a cliché at this point, but giving your computer a reset really can help. If the CPU is under a lot of stress, or some other unknown hiccup occurs, it can prevent the drive from showing up. Giving the system a reset can give the computer a second chance to recognize the drive. First, unplug the drive, then restart the computer. Don’t immediately plug it back in; give the system some time to start up and try the drive again.
3. Try Another Cable, Port, or PC
(Credit: Cronislaw / Shutterstock)
If the drive still isn’t working, unplug it and try a different port. It could just be finicky with your specific drive. If it’s plugged into a USB 3.0 port, try a USB 2.0 port. If it’s plugged into a USB hub, try plugging it directly into the PC instead. It’s also possible there’s an issue with the USB cord, so try the drive again with a spare hookup.
You might also try it in another computer. If you’re a multi-platform household, I’d especially recommend trying it in a computer that runs another operating system. So if you can’t get the drive to show up on a Windows PC, try plugging it into a Mac, or vice versa. It’s possible the drive just isn’t formatted for the computer you’re trying to use, and you’ll need to copy that data onto a drive that’s formatted for cross-compatibility.
A more serious issue is that the port in question could be failing. If the drive works in another port or on a different computer, you may need to do some extra work to fix the USB port.
4. Update Your Drivers
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)
Occasionally, Windows runs into driver issues that render a device unrecognizable. Open the Start menu, type “device manager,” and open the Device Manager menu. Expand the listing for Disk Drives and Universal Serial Bus to see if your external drive appears. If you see its entry with a yellow exclamation mark, right-click on it and choose Properties—there may be an error code you can look up. You can also head to the Driver tab and try updating or uninstalling the driver and rebooting your PC.
Usually, external drives just use Windows’ built-in USB and hard disk drivers, so this isn’t likely to fix a temperamental drive, but it’s worth a shot. (You can also try downloading drivers from the drive manufacturer’s website, but again, that’s probably a long shot.) Check out our guide to updating your drivers for more details on this process.
On a Mac, open Launchpad > Other > System Information, then unfurl the USB listing to see if the drive you plugged in has been detected. Unfortunately, there is no way to update individual drivers on a Mac. Instead, you can simply update macOS itself. To do this, open System Settings > General > Software Update or (System Preferences > Software Update on older systems) and see if an update is available to install.
One last option available here is to try resetting the NVRAM, which stores peripheral data, and see if that resolves any issues. If you have an Intel-based Mac, shut it down, then start it up again. As it boots, hold Option + Command + P + R until you see the Apple logo appear twice. An Apple Silicon Mac just needs a normal reset.
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5. Enable and Format the Drive in Disk Management
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)
If your drive is powered on but still isn’t appearing in File Explorer, it’s time to do some digging. Open the Start menu, type “disk management,” and click Create and Format Hard Disk Partitions. Once Disk Management loads, scroll down to see if your disk appears in the list. If it does, make sure it’s online and formatted.
If it’s offline, right-click the disk’s name (e.g. “Disk 2”) and choose Online. If the disk hasn’t been formatted (it’ll say “Unallocated” under a black bar), right-click it and choose New Simple Volume. This will also solve the problem if the drive is formatted for another operating system. Be warned that formatting will erase any data on it.
Finally, if your drive is online and formatted, but doesn’t show a drive letter next to its name, right-click the volume and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths to add a drive letter. If you’re lucky, one of these simple steps should get your new drive up and running.
On a Mac, you would need to open Launchpad > Other > Disk Utility to view a similar menu. If it shows up but is grayed out and inaccessible, you may need to manually mount the drive. Select the drive, then choose Mount. If the drive does not mount or has no visible partition, the data could be corrupted. Click the First Aid button to see if macOS can repair the drive.
6. Clean the Disk and Start From Scratch
(Credit: PCMag / Microsoft)
In some more specific cases, the drive will appear in Disk Management, but merely formatting the drive won’t work. This is extremely common with SD cards formatted with Linux distributions for the Raspberry Pi, for example.
To regain your drive’s full capacity, you’ll need to run Windows’ “clean” command, which will return the drive to a completely unformatted state. Again, this will erase anything on it, so only continue if you have no other options—and make extra sure you’re cleaning the correct disk, or you could lose a lot of data.
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Open the Start menu, type “diskpart,” and press Enter to open the run command. When the prompt appears, type “list disk” and press Enter to see the disks plugged into your system. If you see the drive in question appear—pay close attention to its size—make a note of its name. We’ll use “Disk 1” in this example.
Type “select disk 1” and press Enter to select the disk you want to clean. Finally, type “clean” and press Enter. This will erase the disk, at which point you can follow the above steps to format it from the Disk Management console.
While Mac users don’t have one widely accepted equivalent to diskpart, some have noted that the diskutil command works similarly. You can open Launchpad > Other > Terminal to enter the command.
7. Remove and Test the Bare Drive
Sabrent USB 3.0 to SATA External Hard Drive (Credit: Sabrent)
If none of the above options work, you should remove the drive from its external enclosure and test the drive on its own. The components that convert the SATA drive into USB can fail, meaning the drive could be just fine if you connect it some other way.
For anyone with a desktop PC and the technological know-how, you can open it up and plug the drive directly into your motherboard. Otherwise, you can buy an external SATA-to-USB docking station or enclosure, plug your bare drive into that, then connect it to your PC over USB.
If it works, then your old enclosure (or its power supply) may be broken. If your drive still isn’t recognized, you may have a dead drive. Try a different drive (if you have one) to confirm once and for all if your external hard drive is the issue.
A dead drive may be beyond repair and simply need replacing. Check with the drive’s manufacturer to see if the device is under warranty. Otherwise, take a look at PCMag’s roundup of the best hard drives, SSDs, wireless drives, and rugged drives. We also have a roundup of the best drives for Mac.
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About Whitson Gordon
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