External HDD not showing up anywhere Windows 8.1

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Vibhav_1

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Sep 7, 2015
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My Seagate External Hard Drive 2TB isn't being detected at all on a laptop i got from my friend with Windows 8.1 on it. Not in My Computer, Device Manager or Disk Management. The LED is on and I can hear it whirring but nothing else. It is however working on my regular laptop with Windows 7 on it and i've never had any issues plugging it into other systems i own as well(all others have 7 on them). Please help this is driving me nuts.
Edit: I ran Windows update and installed around 130 updates at once. No change before or after the updates. Checked the hard disk and usb drivers too.
 
Solution
D_Know_WD
It's great that you've sorted this out. :D

As I said, the fact that the HDD is working fine for some time and disconnects, kind of rules out a driver related issue and points towards a physical one. In that case it was the connection.
When dealing with external drives, your first troubleshooting steps should be: 1)try a different USB cable 2) attach it to a different port.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
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BadAsAl

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Do you have another USB drive or stick to try on the laptop to make sure it isn't an issue with the USB ports?
It is also possible the external drive is trying to use a drive letter that is in use with another device. Check disk management and change the drive letter of any non-boot drive do a higher letter and see if the drive pops up after that. Also can try running DISKPART from command prompt and then executing "list disk" to see if it shows up there.
 
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Vibhav_1

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Hello all, thank you for your responses. Here are my updates: First of all, i shut off my laptop for around 7 hours yesterday and on opening it today morning my HDD seem to be recognized and i was able to transfer files from it. It even seemed to work after a couple of restarts. However, after a few hours, while i was away from the computer for a few mins my HDDs LED stopped blinking and the device was disconnected. Replugging it doesn't seem to help and it's back to the old state of not being recognized now.
1) I have tried another USB drive and it works on the system.
2) I have 1 boot drive(C), 1 Recovery Drive(D) and 1 DVD drive. I wasn't able to rename the Recovery Drive but i managed to rename DVD drive to I. Still no change.
3) With the 'list disk' command I am only able to see my C drive, even the recovery drive does not show up, is this normal?
4) I have disabled the Selective Suspend setting. It didn't seem to help even after restart. Is this an important setting? Should i re-enable it?

How do i go about checking the drive in the BIOS? I have a hp laptop. Only place i figured i'd see it was in boot options. In there i saw an option to boot from USB drive or something of that sort, nothing specific like Seagate External HDD.
Any further help would be much appreciated.
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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Hm, that is strange.
Yeah, you can turn the Selective Suspend setting back on.

The fact that other external drives work just fine on your laptop, indicates that this should not be a drive related issue. Furthermore, in case it is a driver related issue, it is far more likely to not be recognized from the beginning, but not after several hours of activity. This points towards some physical issue(either the enclosure or the HDD itself), as it disappears from Disk Management and Device Manager.

On the other hand, the HDD works fine on another system. While attached to it, I guess you can run some testing: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/282651-32-best-diagnostic-testing-utility

Have you tried to use it for a longer period of time on your other laptop(Win 7 one)?

Also, you can try using the cable of the external drive that is working fine.

D_Know_WD
 
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Vibhav_1

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Sep 7, 2015
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Hello again and thanks for your response,
Strangely the Selective Suspend setting seems to be turned on, i'm positive i disabled it. Also sorry I wasn't clearer but the other USB device was a pen drive, so no cables or power source. I am used to having the external HDD on for more than periods of 12 hrs on my Windows 7 laptop without issue so haven't noticed any problems there.
Lastly i tried the trial version of HD Tune on your recommendation and even that doesn't seem to recognize the HDD. Could you tell me how I can check if the device is showing up in HP BIOS?
Edit: Ok an update. This might all make me look like an idiot. So i just jammed the USB cable in harder out of frustration. Turns out either my cable or this laptops USB drives are slightly deformed and they just need a good ol' fashioned hard shove to make them work... Thank you all for your responses in trying to solve my stupidity.
 
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D_Know_WD

D_Know_WD

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Jul 30, 2014
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It's great that you've sorted this out. :D

As I said, the fact that the HDD is working fine for some time and disconnects, kind of rules out a driver related issue and points towards a physical one. In that case it was the connection.
When dealing with external drives, your first troubleshooting steps should be: 1)try a different USB cable 2) attach it to a different port.

Cheers,
D_Know_WD
 
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Solution
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ACPAXD

Jul 14, 2019
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BadAsAl said:
Do you have another USB drive or stick to try on the laptop to make sure it isn't an issue with the USB ports?
It is also possible the external drive is trying to use a drive letter that is in use with another device. Check disk management and change the drive letter of any non-boot drive do a higher letter and see if the drive pops up after that. Also can try running DISKPART from command prompt and then executing "list disk" to see if it shows up there.
Click to expand...


Hello, I am having the same issue but I am not tech savvy at all. Would you mind explaining how to change the drive letter? Or point me in the direction of a website that would explain it? I'm trying to get all of my teaching files off of this external harddrive. The files show up perfectly fine when I plug it into my Mac (I use it for my Time Machine backup) but when I try to open it on my desktop PC (Asus with Windows 8.1) the files don't show up. Thank you in advance!
 
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