10 Super Efficient Solutions to Fix External Hard Drive Not Working

"I get a Seagate external hard drive for my Xbox one, but it does not show up. How to fix it?"

"My Western Digital external hard drive just stopped working on my Windows 10 computer. I swear I do nothing. How to repair it?"

External hard drive is the good way to extend memory on your computer or Xbox One/360.

You can create partition and stored data in your external hard drive.

Famous external hard drive brands like Western Digital (WD), Seagate, Iomega, Silicon Power, LaCie, Toshiba, etc. also attracts many of users like you.

However, some users complain that their external hard drives stops working like as below,

• My Seagate 2GB external hard drive not reading.
• My WD external hard drive just stopped working.
• My hard drive not showing up in disk management.
• My external hard drive is not accessible.
• My external hard drive is not recognized on Windows 10.
• WD external hard disk is not detected.

If you also feel salty for not working external hard drive, just keep reading to get the 10 easy workarounds to solve this problem.

Repair External Hard Drive

• Solution 1. Boot computer into Safe Mode
• Solution 2. Run a CMD disk checkup
• Solution 3. Check and repair external hard drive via System File Checker
• Solution 4. Check Power Management for USB hub
• Solution 5. Uninstall/Update external hard driver
• Solution 6. Repartition to unhide external hard drive
• Solution 7. Format inaccessible external hard drive
• Solution 8. System Restore
• Solution 9. Third-party apps for repairing external hard drive not responding
• Solution 10. Recover data after fixing not working external hard drive

Solution 1. Boot computer into Safe Mode

Sometimes, when an external hard drive, like a USB or SD card external hard drive, doesn't show up, the problem might exist on PC. You can put your computer into Safe Mode to avoid this problem.

Enter Safe Mode on Windows 7

Step 1 Remove all floppy disks, CDs, and DVDs from your computer, and restart your computer.

Step 2 Use the arrow key to highlight the OS (if you installed more than one OS) you want to start in Safe Mode, press F8 before the Windows logo appears to enter the "Advanced Boot Options" screen.

Step 3 On the "Advanced Boot Options" screen, use the arrow keys to highlight the safe mode option you want, and then press "Enter".

Step 4 Log on to your computer with a user account that has administrator rights.

Boot into Safe Mode on Windows 10

Step 1 Click "Windows" button > "On/Off" > Hold on the "Shift" key and click "Restart" > Click "Troubleshoot" > "Advanced options".

Step 2 In the pop-up option, select "Start-up Settings" > "Restart" and several boot option will be displayed. Select "Enable Safe Mode" by pressing F4 key on your keyboard. Or Safe Mode related 5 and 6 by pressing F5 and F6.

Head to Safe Mode on Window 8

Step 1 Right click "App Applications" on your Windows 8 > Click "Command Prompt" and right click, and then click once more Executable by system administrator.

Step 2 If there is user account control, click "Yes".

In the pop-up window, input "Bcdedit /set {bootmgr} displaybootmenu yes" and press "Enter".

Step 3 Once completed, restart your computer, and press F8 to enter the "Startup Settings" screen. Press F4 to enter Safe Mode on Windows 8.

Solution 2. Run a CMD disk checkup

When your external hard drive is not responding or detected by your Windows computer, you can run CMD disk checkup.

Step 1 Open Start menu to find "Command Prompt", right click it to select to run it as administrator.

Step 2 Type "chkdsk /f *:"

* represents the external hard drive letter that you want to repair.

Step 3 Hit Enter to let the checking process to run. When it is done, type "exit" and hit "Enter" to finish the process.

Solution 3. Check and repair external hard drive via System File Checker

System File Checker is a tool built-in Windows that allows users to scan for corruptions in Windows system files and restore corrupted files.

Step 1 Click "Start", type "Command Prompt" or "cmd" in the "Search" box, right-click "Command Prompt", and then select "Run as administrator".

Step 2 At the command prompt, type "sfc /scannow", and then press ENTER.

Solution 4. Check Power Management for USB hub

It may be the cause by USB port. You can connect your external hard drive to another USB port. Or use this drive in another computer to check if it is not working. If the problem still appears, just check the Power Management for USB hub.

Step 1 Click "Start" > Input "devmgmt.msc" and Enter.

Step 2 Open "Device Manager" > "Universal Serial Bus controllers" > Right-click "USB Root Hub" > "Properties" > "Power Management" > uncheck "Allow the computer to turn off this device" to save power.

Solution 5. Uninstall/Update external hard driver

External hard drive is not showing up on your computer? Just try to uninstall or update the drives.

Step 1 Click on "Start" > Type "devmgmt.msc and hit "Enter" > Open "Device Manager" > Expand "Universal Serial Bus controllers" > Check out whether any device shows up as unrecognized.

Step 2 If it shows as unrecognized, go to the drivers tab and "Uninstall the driver.

Step 3 If it doesn't show up, reboot or restart your computer.

Step 4 If it shows up but disappears later, repeat the above steps and go to "Disk Management" > change drive letter of your external drive only.

Solution 6. Repartition to unhide external hard drive

If your external hard drive does not show up on your computer, you just need to create a partition for this drive.

Click "Start" > Type "diskmgmt.msc" in Search box and run this utility as administrator > Right click the hidden partition, choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths" > "Add" to give a letter for this partition.

You'd better add the original letter for this partition.

Solution 7. Format inaccessible external hard drive

Sometimes, hard drive format can also be the magic.

Formatting hard drive will drag your external hard drive to the original state, where everything seems to new. However, formatting hard drive will wipe all data on the drive, so you had better back up the data.

If you cannot access the hard drive data, just get format drive recovery.

Now, let's follow the steps to format your inaccessible external hard drive here.

Connect your Drive to your computer > Right click "Computer" > Select "Manage" > "Disk Management" > Right-click on the not working Drive > "Format" > Set "File System" and "Volume Label" to launch a quick format option.

Solution 8. System Restore

External hard drive not working always occur suddenly. Thus, just restore your computer system to a previous point, which all your data and settings will be back to a previous point. To some extends, it sounds like time machine to put you back to the past.

Note: System restore will wipe some newly-added data after the previous point. So you had better back up your computer data to another external hard drive.

Solution 9. Third-party apps for repairing external hard drive not responding

When you rack your brain to find the solutions to fix dead or not working external hard drive, and find nothing, you may need to turn to some third-party repair tools for help.

Similar external hard drive repair tools like MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro, EaseUS Partition Master, Paragon Partition Manager, TestDisk, WinDirStat, etc. can be your list for try.

Solution 10. Recover data after fixing not working external hard drive

Last and most important solution is to recover data from your external hard drive, if you find some files missing on the drive.

You are able to copy and paste the data from your backup, if you did before.

No backup? Just use the hard drive recovery software, Aiseesoft Data Recovery, to help you.

Aiseesoft Data Recovery is the data retrieval program, which enables you to recover lost or missing data on internal and external hard drive, even your hard drive is formatted, Shift deleted, crashed, etc. Moreovre, it enalbes you to recover data from external hard drive like SanDisk, Seagate, Toshiba, Lacie, G-Technology, Buffalo, Apple, ADATA, Transcend, PNY, NETGEAR, EMTEC, Verbatim, Promise Technology, mophie, etc.

Step 1 Free download this software to your computer. Make your external hard drive connected with your computer.

This software is capable of recovering and reparing hard drive from Toshiba, WD, Seagate, Lacie, SanDisk, G-Technology, Buffalo, Apple, ADATA, Transcend, PNY, NETGEAR, EMTEC, Verbatim, Promise Technology, mophie, etc.

Step 2 In the main interface, you need to select data type for scanning and find your external hard drive to tick it. Click "Scan" to start a quick scan of your external hard drive.

Step 3 After the scan result is complete, you can click the data type to view the details on the right window. Checkmark and click "Recover" to save the missing or lost files to your computer.

You may need: How to Screenshot on Toshiba

Conclusion

This page collects the 10 efficient solutions to fix external hard drive not working/reading/responding. Next time, you suffer from such issues, you can easily repair it by yourself. Without professional computer knowledge, but the step-by-step guide can be enough to help you.

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