External hard drive not showing on computer or disk management

supersteph

Reputable
Aug 22, 2015
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0
4,510
Hi

When i plug in my Samsung M3 portable hard drive my laptop recognises it however nothing shows in my computer like it used too. All help threads seem to advise me to look in disk management BUT its not showing there either. When the hard drive is plugged in disk management rarely loads up.

On occasions the hard drive has loaded on local disc F however its always crashing, no responding and i cannot access any of the folder.

Any ideas? Can i recover whats lost?
 
Hi there supersteph,

Your HDD is most probably failing. :(
I guess you can start with something simple as just attaching the drive with a different USB cable to another system.
In case the issue persists, you can boot up Ubuntu either from a CD or a flash drive and see whether you will be able to access the drive: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/267999-32-recover-data-mode
You can try using some data recovery tools as well. Though, as even Disk Management can't load, it is highly possible that the tools will not be able to access the drive as well.

Some testing tool should show you what is wrong with the drive: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Cheers,
D_Know_WD