External Hard drive (portable) not appearing in disk management and my computer

Sidharth C S · Jun 8, 2015

I accidentally removed my Seagate 2tb portable external hard drive while copying files. Now, the device wont even show up. It's not showing up in disk management and my computer. I almost tried everything. Although it shows up in device manager. Once plugged, i can't eject my hard drive too. Please help.
Thanks in advance.

puttynene · Jun 8, 2015

Hello Sidhartha,

Go to Device Manger> Disk drives> right click to disable the hdd, unpluh the power cord to the hhd wait for few seconds and then reconnect the power cord.
See if this helps... do let me know

Sidharth C S · Jun 8, 2015

puttynene :

I appreciate your help. It's not working. So i just did what you said and then i got a "not responding" screen.Then, i unplugged the USB cable, enabled it. I still got the "not responding" screen while enabling the drive. So i had to unplug and plug it again.

D_Know_WD · Jun 8, 2015

Hi there Sidharth C S,

After you have removed your HDD while transferring data, it is far more likely for the HDD to lose it's partitions/file system than to disappear completely from Disk Management.
Usually, when a hard drive is recognized by Device Management but not Disk Management, this could point towards a driver related issue. So, puttynene's advice was a good one.

You can try something simple as just attaching the drive with a different USB cable as well as to a different USB port.
If the issue persists, you can even connect the drive to another computer. This way you will be sure whether it is some kind of a driver related issue or not.

In case the drive is not recognized by Disk Management, I doubt that you will be able to access it with some software testing tools.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

Sidharth C S · Jun 8, 2015

D_Know_WD :

Hi there Sidharth C S,

After you have removed your HDD while transferring data, it is far more likely for the HDD to lose it's partitions/file system than to disappear completely from Disk Management.
Usually, when a hard drive is recognized by Device Management but not Disk Management, this could point towards a driver related issue. So, puttynene's advice was a good one.

You can try something simple as just attaching the drive with a different USB cable as well as to a different USB port.
If the issue persists, you can even connect the drive to another computer. This way you will be sure whether it is some kind of a driver related issue or not.

In case the drive is not recognized by Disk Management, I doubt that you will be able to access it with some software testing tools.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD

I used another SATA cable and I also tried this on multiple systems. Still not working.

D_Know_WD · Jun 8, 2015

Do you need the data stored on your drive?

In case you don't, and the drive is still under warranty, you can contact the manufacturer and eventually RMA it.
In case you do, you can try that out and see whether this will pick up the drive: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode

Hope this will help,
D_Know_WD

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