External Hard Drive Cannot Be Accessed.

Bridenfelt

Reputable
Sep 10, 2014
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Lately I've been having issues with my computer, so I decided to do a system reset and unplugged my external hard drive ( I don't know why I did so don't even ask lol) and after I started I realized "no I could just do a system restore" so that's what I proceeded to do.

After the system restore I plugged my hard drive back in and wasn't able to access it again. I can't find it anywhere except in control panel under storage spaces where it tells me it's an unrecognized configuration. I have no idea how to fix this. I tried various options I found online such as assigning it a driver letter and what not, and I'm afraid it may be forever inaccessible and I may be lucky to salvage files from it.

Can someone make my day and tell me it's not true with a solution to fix it?
 
Hi Bridenfelt. From your post it doesn't get quite clear if you were having these problems before the system restore, because you say that after that you couldn't access your external drive "again". First of all you could try the drive with different USB cables (not longer than 12"), different USB ports and different devices. If the drive works fine with any of those methods, but still isn't recognized, open up Disk Management to see if it shows up there. If it does look at this topic here on how to change the drive's letter and see if it fixes it for you: http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/137/

Good luck with your drive. Let me know if you have any questions.
Boogieman_WD