cannot see external harddrive

  • Thread starter Thread starter ealadi
  • Start date Start date
E

ealadi

I have en external HD with some important files. The Drive is
connected via USB. Two days ago the HD stopped appearing in Explorer
when plugged in. Since I cannot see the drive in Explorer I cannot
access the files. The drive does appear with it correct name (HD2Go)
in Controlpanel, System, Devices. If I right click I get the message
(in Danish) that the device is working correct. When I connect the HD
a message appears that drivers are being installed, and then that
drivers are installed and the device is working.

Thank you for any suggestion.
Erik
 
I have en external HD with some important files. The Drive is
connected via USB. Two days ago the HD stopped appearing in Explorer
when plugged in. Since I cannot see the drive in Explorer I cannot
access the files. The drive does appear with it correct name (HD2Go)
in Controlpanel, System, Devices. If I right click I get the message
(in Danish)
Click to expand...

Ah! Your drive may only understand English :-)
that the device is working correct. When I connect the HD
a message appears that drivers are being installed, and then that
drivers are installed and the device is working.
Click to expand...

Go to Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management
- Storage - Disk Management (local)
(Yes, you'll have to guess the translation for all of them :-)
You will probably see your external drive there, but without a
drive letter assigned to it. You can assign a letter here.

If the external drive realy is faulty, keep in mind that it is
often the USB interface electronics in the external exclosure
that is at fault. Often, placing the drive in another enclosure
or directly into a PC renders it readable again.
 
Other problems can be just a confused USB section of Windows.

With your USB drive unplugged go into the control panel/services/Device
Manager (varies by Windows version on how to get there) and delete
everything under Universal Serial Buss Controllers followed by a reboot.
  During the reboot Windows will "discover" the computer's USB stuff
like it would during an initial install.   After the driver installs are
done try plugging in your USB drive and see if Windows loads the driver
for it and works as it used to.

Another way to get a the data on the USB drive is to boot one of the
"Live Linux" distributions from a CD,DVD, or USB drive and see if it can
access the files and possibly copy them to another drive.

A small version that works with many computers right out of the box is
Lucid Puppy which can be found at:

http://puppylinuxnews.org/releases/lucid-puppy-51-is-released/?catego...

The ISO file can be burned to a CD and then booted.  No need to do any
install stuff if you don't want it to remain on your computer when you
are finished or to save anything during the shutdown of Puppy.

Instructions on how to create a USB flash version can be found here:

http://www.pendrivelinux.com/put-lucid-puppy-on-usb-flash-drive-from-...

If a Linux distribution can access the hard drive then most likely the
problem is Windows related but problems could still remain with the
drive itself as different versions of operating systems access the drive
slightly differently.
Click to expand...


Hello Glowing Blue and Gerard
Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge. This information has
been useful to me, even the problem is still unresolved.
I tried to connect the faulty drive to 3 different computers, all with
the same result. The drive can be found in system devices, but it
cannot be accessed in Explorer. I went to a computer repair shop; they
told me that it has lost the partition; they are trying to recover the
files; a process I probably could do myself with a program like
GetDataBack or TestDisk
 
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