External Hard Drive Not Seen By Pc

[wagginfinger 10]

I have a Toshiba external hard drive with photos and MP3s  on it that I can,t access

I have not used it for at leased 2/3 years and don't remember if it had CD to load drivers    If anyone has any ideas would be grateful. Thanks

[Ghozer 112]

as long as it's powered, and plugged in to a working USB socket, it should work fine, and shouldn't require any drivers..

Does it have/need it's own external power supply?

Does it have any lights / are they on/flashing?

Can you hear it start-up and spin etc?

Are there any errors, or is it just not showing?

[musthavafag 10]

Of course anything connected to pc or laptop requires drivers... go to Toshiba support and download the latest

[Ghozer 112]

7 hours ago, musthavafag said:

Of course anything connected to pc or laptop requires drivers... go to Toshiba support and download the latest

Ignore this, 99.9% of external HDD's and USB Memory sticks don't require a driver, as they use the Windows Standard USB Storage driver etc....
 

[alchresearch 213]

If you're plugging it into a Windows PC, listen for the "bing bong" sound.

 

Also have a listen at the drive if you can hear it spinning up, and there are no clunks or clicks.

 

Then have a look in device manager or disk manager to see if its showing.

 

 

[sandbox 11]

Try this.

With the Ext. hard  drive plugged in go  to Control Panel>All Control Panel Items>Administrative Tools and open 'Computer Management'. Go to Storage>Disk Management and right click the  relevant disk and change drive letter.

Hope this helps

[zach 234]

22 hours ago, sandbox said:

Try this.

With the Ext. hard  drive plugged in go  to Control Panel>All Control Panel Items>Administrative Tools and open 'Computer Management'. Go to Storage>Disk Management and right click the  relevant disk and change drive letter.

Hope this helps

This is a good point, I have a WD 2TB portable that doesn't always obtain a drive letter in Windows. Easily fixed with the instructions above.

 

Another thing to watch out for is a broken USB board. This normally shows errors in the OS but the actual hard drive can be working OK, it just needs removing from the existing USB/Caddy and connecting direct to SATA or used on another (working) USB external case. 

 

Can you list the make and model? Knowing this might help people find a fix for you.