[Win 8.1] External Hard Drives no longer showing up in 'This PC'

r3nu4l · 20-03-2015 04:08PM #1

I've got two 1TB WD Element external USB hard drives. They have been in storage for a while and now that I've plugged them into my PC today, they are not showing up in 'This PC'.

The computer still makes that 'you just plugged something in' sound when I power up the drives and connect them to a USB port (tried USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports) but the icon does not show up.

I am in the 'Computer Management' window, went to Storage>Disk Management and I can see the disk there. When I click on Proprties it says the device is working properly but I still can't see it in 'This PC' and can't open any files.

Any idea how I can see these hard drives again? Same ports recognise my phone and camera so not a port issue as such. TIA.

Slydice · 20-03-2015 04:16PM

Sounds like the disk could be broke.

Just going off memory...

Usually there's a coloured line around (or just at the top of) the disk. Either blue or black.

If it's blue, right click and see if there's just an option to assign a drive letter. Might just be that simple.

If it's black I'd start thinking the data is now difficult to get back.

If you don't care about the data, I think you can just right click and initialise followed by a format or create simple volume or something like that.

If you do care about the data, I'd try just plugging it out and in again a few times. If that doesn't work, I'd start looking up data recovery tools and give a few of them a try. There's a free one with SystemRescueCd url]http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage[/url which can (but not always) find lost partitions. That needs a good bit of techie experience to use though. There are other ones that need less techie experience, have a google

Fysh · 20-03-2015 04:20PM

If they're showing up in Disk Management but not in This PC, it sounds like they aren't getting automatically mounted. This occasionally happens if the drive has been connected before (and thus has a last-used drive letter), but another drive has since used the same drive letter. It can also happen if there's a problem with the disk controller in the external device, or if the drive or one of its partitions is corrupt.

In order, I would suggest:
1) In Disk Management, check what the drive reports as. Under the Disk X name you should see a disk type (probably Basic), a size, and a status (online or offline). If it's offline, right-click the disk and select "Online".
2) In Disk Management, check the partition(s). Are they detected as NTFS/FAT32 (delete as appropriate)? If yes, good. If no, there may be a problem. Right-click the partition and select "Change drive letter", then select a letter and click "add". If this works, you should now be able to access the drive contents. If not you'll see an error that should help narrow down the problem.
3) If neither of the above work, I would suggest:
a) opening up the enclosure(s) and connecting the disks directly to a desktop system - this will let us determine whether it's the USB enclosure/disk controller that's the problem, or the disk itself.
b) Boot from a Linux Live Disc (I suggest GParted) and see if it is able to identitfy the disks correctly.

Fysh · 20-03-2015 04:21PM

If the disks are looking like they might have problems, I'd also suggest trying out PhotoRec and TestDisk before giving up on the data as a lost cause. PhotoRec is great for finding deleted files on a recognised/known partition type, and TestDisk has saved my bacon by recovering both deleted partitions and broken partition tables before.

Capt'n Midnight · 21-03-2015 12:46PM

Fysh wrote: »

If the disks are looking like they might have problems, I'd also suggest trying out PhotoRec and TestDisk before giving up on the data as a lost cause. PhotoRec is great for finding deleted files on a recognised/known partition type, and TestDisk has saved my bacon by recovering both deleted partitions and broken partition tables before.

testdisk is a must if you are messing around with partitions

photorec - at one stage I considered writing something to generate checksums for all the files on my systems so I could filter out the files I already had copies of or ID the ones I wanted to recover.

PropJoe10 · 21-03-2015 01:51PM

If you can see them in Disk Management, check in the top part of the window and make sure they're assigned with a drive letter. If not, right click and assign a drive letter and see if they show up in This PC.

r3nu4l · 21-03-2015 09:28PM

Thanks for the replies so far folks.

Okay, so neither of these external disks has a letter assigned and what's more, when I right click, the option to assign a letter or change paths is greyed out and in fact the only option available from the right-click menu is 'delete volume'...

I can see the following for these disks

Disk 1
Basic
931.51 GB
Online

200 MB Healthy EFI partition
931.19 GB Healthy (Primary Partition)
128 MB Unallocated

My external drives do not have an NTFS or FAT32 label beside them (iirc, they were NTFS but that's unconfirmed for now). When I first connect the drive, I can hear the disck spinning and clicking so something is happening. It doesn't sound like there is a fault but obviously something is up.

For my regular internal C and D drives I have all the usual options for hanging letters and paths etc and they are listed as NTFS.

So testdisc? Or any other options before I start going down the 'recovery' route?

Fysh · 21-03-2015 11:34PM

If they're clicking, they may be on the way out - it's not usually a good sign

I'd see what testdisk can tell you, as it seems that the partitions are still there but the partition table has become corrupted in some fashion so Windows doesn't know how to mount them.

Slydice · 21-03-2015 11:48PM

From my experience clicking usually means it's foo-ked.

If it was me and I needed the stuff on the disk, I'd be trying to recover as much as could however I could. Then chuck the disk.

Yeah you can try Testdisk. Looks like you can run it on windows. There's a tutorial here (after a quick google) url]http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step[/url

It's also on the systemrescuecd I linked to earlier. You can get it to boot from a usb using link LinuxLive USB Creator. url]http://www.linuxliveusb.com/[/url

Slydice · 21-03-2015 11:50PM

There's probably a bunch of easier to use software for windows that might help.

(another quick google) Found this recent list: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm

I'd definitely heard some good things about number 1 on that list 'Recuva'

Capt'n Midnight · 22-03-2015 12:41AM

Slydice wrote: »

There's probably a bunch of easier to use software for windows that might help.

(another quick google) Found this recent list: http://pcsupport.about.com/od/filerecovery/tp/free-file-recovery-programs.htm

I'd definitely heard some good things about number 1 on that list 'Recuva'

These are all grand if it's only the partition table or file table that corrupt

wishful thinking but maybe the drive is just spinning down because windows can't recognise it so first of all try a linux boot disk in case

if there is stuff you must recover then use
ddrescue /dev/sdX bigfile.img logfile
X being the external drive.

this will dump the 1's and 0's that can be scraped off the drive into a bigfile.img

you can then run photorec against it or try to mount it , bit messy as you have to use an offset of 63 sectors or something , best ask over on unix forum

Slydice · 22-03-2015 01:38AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

if there is stuff you must recover then use
ddrescue /dev/sdX bigfile.img logfile
X being the external drive.

Yeah, definitely if you are comfortable trying out ddrescue, it'll get you as much as can possibly be gotten back.

Capt'n Midnight · 22-03-2015 12:10PM

Slydice wrote: »

Yeah, definitely if you are comfortable trying out ddrescue, it'll get you as much as can possibly be gotten back.

it's the biz alright

love the way you can merge identical CD's that have been scratched in different places

also you can use the -R switch on a later pass to bypass failed cache on a failed drive

magic would be a script that merged RAID 0 stripes after recovering the individual drives , more magic would be doing the same to RAID 5

[Win 8.1] External Hard Drives no longer showing up in 'This PC'

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