How to Fix It When an External Hard Drive is Not Showing Up in Windows

Troubleshooting an issue with an external hard drive not showing up in Windows 10 requires a methodical approach. It’s best to start from the computer and USB port side, and then work your way toward the external drive itself.

1.Make sure the USB port is actually working. Try plugging other devices into the same USB port to ensure the port isn’t malfunctioning. If you have a second external hard drive, try plugging it into the same port. If it shows up, then you know the port isn’t the issue. If you find that another hard drive, your smartphone, and even a mouse and keyboard doesn’t work with that USB port, then you need to troubleshoot why USB devices aren’t getting recognized by Windows 10.

2.Confirm that you’re using the right USB cable for your USB port type. If the cable that came with the external hard drive is USB 3.0 and your port can only handle USB 2.0 transmission rates, you can run into problems. For most devices a USB 3.0 cable is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 ports, but if the device itself requires USB 3.0 data transmission speeds, it may not work plugged into that port. This is especially true if the device has a USB-C connector that requires the computer port to supply power.

 

If you’re considering upgrading your computer or laptop, the lack of USB 3.0 support is a good reason for it. Especially if you frequently use USB devices and want to use the latest hardware and software that takes full advantage of USB 3.0 data transmission rates.

3.Make sure your USB cable isn’t faulty. When you use a USB cable a lot, it can get bent or stretched, leading to broken internal connections or cracked wire insulation. Try swapping out the USB cable you’re using with your external hard drive with another. If the drive still doesn’t connect, test the original USB cable with a different compatible device. If it works, then you know your USB cable is working fine. If you do need to purchase a new USB cable, make sure you use one that’s high quality and offers the best data transmission rates for the USB port you’re using.

4.Update your USB drivers. If you’ve made it this far then the issue could be with either your external hard drive, or your computer’s ability to communicate to the drive. The software that Windows 10 uses to communicate with USB devices are USB device drivers. Make sure you’ve gone through the process to update your USB drivers. If your external drive is using USB 3.0, then make sure to update your USB 3.0 drivers specifically. Is your hard drive wireless? Make sure it’s appropriately connecting to your Wi-Fi network.

5.Use Disk Management to install the hard drive. In most cases, external hard drives come formatted and plug-and-play ready. This means you just plug it in and your computer will recognize the hard drive. If this isn’t working, you’ll need to use Disk Management to install the drive. If it’s also not already formatted, you’ll need to use Disk Management to format the drive.

This is the most common cause of the problem when an external hard drive is not showing up in Windows 10. Many times, you’ll see the hard drive listed as an available disk, but the status may show a status like “Unallocated”, “Unformatted”, or some other note that’ll help you understand why the computer can’t recognize it. The Disk Management utility can help you fix most of these issues. You can use it for things like partitioning a hard drive, changing a drive letter, and much more.

6.Troubleshoot error codes. If you’re lucky enough to see any error codes when you plug in your external hard drive, make sure to troubleshoot them properly. When attaching USB devices like an external hard drive, you can see common error codes like code 22 errors, code 10 errors, or code 43 errors.

7.Has the hard drive failed? If you’ve come this far and the new drive is still not showing up in Windows, it could be a faulty drive. There are software tools available that can scan hard drive (if it can recognize the attached device). You can also use Windows utilities to check for and repair errors. If the hard drive is making unusual noises, that can also indicate a hardware failure in the drive itself.

8.Buy a new hard drive. Unfortunately, there are times when even new hard drives are faulty and nothing you do will fix them. Bring it back to the store and ask for a refund. There are lots of excellent, high-capacity external hard drives to choose from that are less likely to give you these sorts of problems. Better yet, consider paying a little more for an SSD drive, whether external or internal, as they are more reliable and less prone to hardware problems when jarred or dropped short distances.

How to Zero-Fill a Hard Drive With the Format Command

Since you can write zeros to a hard drive with the format command both from within Windows 7 and Windows Vista and from outside the operating system, we’ve created two ways to proceed through these instructions. This process could take several minutes to several hours.

Start at Step 1 if you need to write zeros to the primary drive, usually C, of any Windows operating system OR if you want to write zeros to any drive on a computer with Windows XP or earlier. Start at Step 6 if you need to write zeros to a drive other than the primary drive in Windows Vista or later; you’ll need to have an elevated Command Prompt window open and ready.

1.Create a System Repair Disc in Windows 7. You’ll need access to a Windows 7 computer to do this. However, it doesn’t need to be your Windows 7 computer. If you don’t have a Windows 7 PC, then find a friend that does and create a repair disc from their computer.

 

If you don’t already have or can’t find a way to create it, then you won’t be able to write zeros to a drive in this way.

See our Free Data Destruction Software Programs list for more options.

2.Boot from the System Repair Disc and watch for the Press any key to boot from CD or DVD… message after your computer turns on, and be sure to do that. If you don’t see this message but instead see the Windows is loading files… message, that’s fine.

3.Wait for the Windows is loading files… screen. When it’s over, you should see a System Recovery Options box. Change any language or keyboard input methods you need to and then select Next >.

4.A little dialog box appears next that says “Searching for Windows installations…”. After several seconds, it will disappear and you’ll be taken to a System Recovery Options window with two options. Choose Use recovery tools that can help fix problems starting Windows. Select an operating system to repair. and then select Next >.

5.Select Command Prompt from the System Recovery Options screen.

6.At the prompt, type the following, followed by Enter:

 

 format e: /fs:NTFS /p:2

The format command used in this way will format the E drive with the NTFS file system and write zeros to every sector of the drive twice. If you’re formatting a different drive, change e to whatever drive letter you need. It doesn’t matter what OS is on the computer.

7.Enter the volume label of the drive you’re formatting when asked, and then press Enter. The volume label is not case sensitive.

Enter current volume label for drive E:

If you don’t know the volume label, cancel the format using Ctrl+C and then see How to Find the Volume Label of a Drive From the Command Prompt.

8.Type Y and then press Enter when prompted with the following warning:

WARNING, ALL DATA ON NON-REMOVABLE DISK DRIVE E: WILL BE LOST! Proceed with Format (Y/N)?

9.Wait while the format completes.

Formatting a drive of any size may take a long time. Formatting a large drive may take a very long time. Formatting a large drive with multiple write-zero passes may take a very, very long time.

If the drive you’re formatting happens to be very large and/or you’ve chosen to make several write-zero passes, don’t worry if the percent completed doesn’t even reach 1 percent for several seconds or even several minutes.

10.After the format, you’ll be prompted to enter a Volume label. Type a name for the drive, or don’t, and then press Enter.

11.Wait while Creating file system structures is displayed on the screen.

12.Once the prompt returns, repeat the above steps on any other partitions on this physical hard drive. You can’t consider the data on an entire physical hard disk destroyed unless you actually format all the drives on the disk using this method.

13.You can now remove the System Repair Disc and turn off your computer. If you’ve used the format command from within Windows, just close the Command Prompt.

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