- Wd External Hard Drive Not Recognized Mac
- Mac External Hard Disk Not Showing In My Computer
- Best Mac Compatible External Hard Drive
Many users complained that their external hard drives are connected but not showing on computer or File Explorer the Windows 10/8/7. Some reported that the USB or external hard drive is not showing up on My Computer or File Explorer but showing in Disk Management. Others said that external hard drive shows in device manager but not disk management. To fix these external hard drive issues, this troubleshooting post will be helpful for you.
Case 1: External hard drive shows up in disk management but not file explorer
You may experience that your USB or external drive has been connected to the computer, but it is not showing in File Explorer or My Computer, but shows in Disk Management instead. Under this situation, it will be regarded as an unknown disk and shows the capacity to be 2048 GB in the Disk Management. To fix the problem, please try following methods.
Tip: If your external hard drive shows in device manager but not disk management, you can directly move to the case 2.
External hard drive, 'add letter' option greyed out Hi guys, I have an issue with my external hard-drive. While it works fine on my mac, Windows 7 cannot seem to let me browse the files on the drive. The computer recognizes it but there is no way to access the files. Check the Mac Trash; Show hidden files in external hard drive; Repair the External Hard Drive with First Aid; Fix the Corrupted External Hard Drive by Reformatting; Solution 1: Make sure your external hard drive is mounted in Disk Utility. Only when your external hard drive is mounted in Disk Utility that you can access files on the drive on Mac. So, if you can't see files on your external hard drive, you should at first check whether the external hard drive is showing up in Disk Utility.
1. Assign a Drive Letter to the USB/Hard Drive
Sometimes, the drive might not have been assigned a drive letter by Windows so that USB or external hard drive cannot show on File Explorer but in Disk Management. In this case, you can try to assign a drive letter to the USB or external hard drive in Disk Management.
STEP 1. Navigate to 'Control Panel'> 'System and Security'> 'Administrative Tools'.
STEP 2. Choose 'Computer Management'. Provide an administrative passcode, if asked.
STEP 3. In Disk Management, find out the unlabeled hard drive and right-click on it to choose 'Change drive letter and paths..'
STEP 4. Click 'Add'> 'OK' to pick out the available drive letter.
STEP 5. If the drive letter does not show on the drive, check if the drive is offline. If it is, right-click the disk number and select Online. And then, follow the instructions again.
NOTE:
Best mac for adobe premiere. If you can't finish the operation in Disk Management, you are able to run 'cmd' to change or assign the drive letter.
Open Command Prompt. (CMD) and type 'diskpart'.
At the DISKPART prompt, enter 'list volume'. ( mark down the number of the simple volume whose drive letter you want to assign)
At the DISKPART prompt, enter 'select volume n[volume's number]' (Select the volume whose drive letter you want to assign)
At the DISKPART prompt, enter 'assign letter=N' (N stands for the drive letter you want to assign)
2. Make sure that the hard drive is enabled and online
Make sure the hard drive is enabled
If the drive has been disabled, the disk will be invisible in File Explorer. When the disk is disabled, follow the steps below to Enable it:
STEP 1. Press 'Windows'+ 'R' on the keyboard to activate run box.
STEP 2. Type 'devmgmt.msc' on the run box to open 'Device Manager'.
STEP 3. If a drive is disabled, the disk drive will be marked with a down arrow. Locate the hard drive you want to enable.
STEP 4. Right-click on it and choose 'Properties'> 'View'tab.
STEP 5. Click on 'Enable Device' button > 'OK'.
STEP 6. After that, check if the down arrow is still there.
Make sure that the drive is online
Sometimes, an external hard drive connected but not showing because the drive is offline. To be detected by Windows, you can follow steps below to check the current status of the disk.
Go to 'Control Panel'> 'System and Security'> 'Administrative Tools'.
Choose 'Computer Management', and locate your disk in 'Disk Management'.
Right-click on it and select 'Online'.
3. Update drivers for USB or external hard drive
When your USB/external drive does not show on file explorer on Windows 10/8/7, you can try to update its driver in Device Manager. As we know, an update is created to fix some glitches for the previous version so as to make USB or external drive showing on My computer again.
STEP 1. Press 'Windows'key + 'R'and enter 'devmgmt.msc' on the run box.
STEP 2. Open 'Device Manager'> Click the 'Scan for hardware changes' icon on the menu.
STEP 3. Right-click on the inaccessible USB/external hard drive and choose 'Update Driver Software..'.
STEP 4. After the update is finished, restart your PC and check if the device is accessible.
4. Recover data from hard drive that is not showing
When external hard drive issue occurs, an external hard drive is not showing files though they still exist. If any important data is in the USB/external hard drive when external hard drive shows up in Disk Management but not File Explorer, you can employ data recovery to retrieve your data before formatting it. Here we highly recommend you FonePaw Data Recovery which is capable of recovering data from USB/ external hard drive, supporting Window 10/8/7. To recover data from hard drive, you just need few simple steps.
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Wd External Hard Drive Not Recognized Mac
STEP 1. Run FonePaw Data Recovery, and then, select the file types you need.
STEP 2. Next, click on 'Scan' button after selecting your USB/external drive.
STEP 3. Select out the files you want to recover.
STEP 4. Finally, click on 'Recover' button to finish data recovery.
STEP 5. After that, you can keep on formatting your inaccessible USB/external hard drive.
Case 2: External hard drive shows up in Device Manager but not Disk Management or File Explorer
Unlike case 1, USB or external hard drive sometimes is invisible in File Explorer or Disk Management, but it can be detected in Device Manager, for example, an external HDD won't show up in explorer, but it shows in Device Manager. To fix the issue, several methods can be listed below.
1. Make sure the USB or external hard drive is available. If it is not showing up in Disk Management or File Explorer, you can try to plug it into other USB port of your computer. What's more, you can connect your external drive to other computers to check if it works.
2. Partition and format the external hard drive.
Go to 'Computer Management'. > Right-click on black bar of the invisible drive to choose 'New Partition..'> Follow the instruction to finish the Partition.
Right-click on the drive and select 'Format'.
3. Disable and re-enable the USB controller.
Navigate to 'Device Manager'. > Find 'Unknown USB Device' and right-click on it. > Choose 'Uninstall'.
After restarting your PC, enable the USB controller again.
Now, your issue - external hard drive not showing Windows 10/8/7 has been resolved. To manage the data on USB/external hard drive, read here:
Here is a step-by-step guide for you to fix Seagate external hard drive not showing up in My Computer in Windows 10. Providing that data is valuable, we suggest you try fixes first to make the disk show up in Disk Management, and next take one more step to recover data on the unrecognized Seagate external hard drive with the help of EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.
'My 320 GB Seagate external hard drive is detected but not showing up in My Computer. What should I do? In Device Manager, it gets detected and in disk management, it shows up as 'unallocated'. Is there any way to fix the issue? If I initialize it, will I lose all the data on the drive? I'm using Windows 10.'
How to fix Seagate external hard drive not showing up in Windows 10
Sometimes, when you plug in your Seagate external hard drive to PC, it cannot be recognized by your PC. As a result, the disk and the folders & files on it then become inaccessible. Actually, there are not the few have experienced such an issue of Seagate external hard drive not showing up in Windows 10 Computer. Next, we will show you how to fix the issue without losing data.
1. Make Seagate external hard drive show up in disk management
The first thing you need to do is to check if it is showing up in disk management. If yes, you can skip to the next step. And if not, you should first update the disk driver to make the Seagate external hard drive recognized by Windows and show up in disk management.
Step 1. In Run (Windows + R), type devmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
Step 2. In Device Manager, next to Universal Serial Bus controller, click '+ (plus)'. Then you'll see a yellow exclamation mark. Right-click and choose update driver software.
Step 3. Click 'automatically search for driver software online..'
Step 4. After the process completes, restart your computer and the driver should be automatically installed and loaded in your computer.
Step 5. Go to Windows Disk Management (This PC > Manage > Disk Management), check if the Seagate external hard drive shows as a normal hard disk there.
Mac External Hard Disk Not Showing In My Computer
Sometimes, even the hard drive shows up in Disk Management, it's with strange characters like Unallocated, RAW, disk unknown not initialized, etc. It's detected but not accessible, so this time you must perform data recovery on the hard drive without delay.
2. Recover data from the Seagate external hard drive which is showing but not opening
When you see the Seagate external hard drive listed in the Disk Management window, you can try EaseUS disk data recovery to retrieve your data. It works well on external hard drive data recovery even when the disk is not opening in your Computer.
By going through three short stages, you can easily find lost data on a Seagate external hard drive.
Step 1. Under the 'External Devices', you should see the Seagate external hard drive showing up after it's correctly connected to your computer. Select the drive and click the Scan button.
Step 2. Soon, the software will find more and more data and display the data in the scan results.
Step 3. You can use the Filter feature to quickly locate some specific file types in the results. Select the target files and click the Recover button.
3. Reformat and partition Seagate external hard drive to make it show up in Computer
After Seagate external hard drive recovery, you can then reformat and partition the disk to initialize the disk and make it show up in your computer without losing data.
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Step 1. Go to This PC > Manage > Disk Management, right-click the disk partition you need to format and then choose Format.
Step 2. In the pop-up window, you can set file system and cluster size and then click OK.
Note: If you also happen to encounter the flash drive not showing up on Mac, here is the access for online help.
