This tutorial is about How To Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing Up In Windows 11. Recently I updated this tutorial and will try my best so that you understand this guide. I hope you guys like this blog, How To Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing Up In Windows 11. If your answer is yes after reading the article, please share this article with your friends and family to support us.
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Check How To Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing Up In Windows 11
Sometimes our PC goes short or fails to detect the external hard drive even after confirming the successful connection. The problem mostly occurs when the device driver is corrupted or outdated. Such problems can be very precarious to solve. You can spend hours and not find a solution. Try these solutions and check if the issue of external hard drive not distinguishing in Windows 11/10/8/7 is resolved.
How to fix external hard drive not showing up in Windows 11
Format external hard drive
If your hard drive doesn’t show up in File Explorer, you’ll need to format it using Disk Management. To format the external hard drive using Disk Management, follow the steps below.
- Press the Windows + R key combination on your PC to open the Run dialog box.
- In the Run dialog box, type diskmgmt.msc and click OK or press Enter to open Disk Management. In Disk Management, right-click the problem disk, and then click Format.
- Next, you will be prompted to enter the volume label, file system, allocation unit size, and also select whether you want a quick format or not. After doing so, click OK to continue.
This will most likely fix the external hard drive not showing up issue in Windows 11. However, if you still encounter the issue then follow the next troubleshooting method.
Create a new volume
If the external hard drive still doesn’t show up in Disk Management, you should try creating a new volume. To do so, follow the steps below.
- Open Disk Management from the power menu. To do so, press the Windows + X key combination and then from the menu select Disk Management.
- In Disk Management, check if the drive is already Unallocated space or the primary partition. Unallocated space will have a black bar at the top, while the main partition will have a blue bar. If the drive is a primary partition, you will need to convert it to Unallocated space. If the drive has Unallocated space, you can skip to the fourth step.
- Right-click the volume/drive that has the problem, and then click Delete Volume to delete it and convert it to Unallocated space. After doing so, you will see a black bar at the top of the drive, which means the drive has been successfully marked as Unallocated space. Now you will have to create a new simple volume of the space.
- Right-click on the Unallocated space, and then click New Simple Volume. This will open the New Simple Volume Wizard; here, click Next.
- You will be prompted to enter the Simple Volume Size in MB. The size you enter cannot be larger than the maximum disk space. Once done, click Next.
- You will then be given two options: assign the drive letter or mount it to the empty NTFS folder. Select Assign the following drive letter, and then select the drive letter. Click Next.
- You will be asked if you want to format the drive or not. Select Format this volume with the following configuration option. You will then need to configure the file system, allocate the drive size, and label the volume. Once you are done with all of this, click Next.
- The process will complete. To close the New Simple Volume Wizard, click Finish.
- After doing so, the drive will open in File Explorer, indicating that the problem was successfully fixed.
Check drive status
You can use device manager to check the status of the drive. This will tell you if the device is working fine or not. To check the status of the drive, follow the steps below.
- In the Start menu, search for Device Manager and open it.
- Now, expand the Drives section by double clicking on it.
- Right click on the drive with the error. Click properties to open the properties.
- In the General tab of the properties, you will see the Device Status. Check whether it shows the device is working properly or not. If it shows any error message, you can find it and fix it.
- If the device status shows that it is working properly, you should try to update the drivers or reinstall them.
Updating hard drive drivers
You should try to update the hard drivers and then check if you are still facing the error or not. To update your hard drive drivers, follow the steps below.
- In the Start menu, search for Device Manager and open it.
- Now double-click on the Drives section to expand it.
- Here, right-click on the drive that has the error.
- Click Update Driver.
- Once the driver has been updated, close Device Manager and restart your PC.
- Now you should no longer be facing external drive not showing up in Windows 11 issue.
Reinstall hard drive drivers
If any of the above steps didn’t work for you, then maybe you should try reinstalling the hard drive drivers. You can do it easily with the help of device manager. To reinstall hard drive drivers using device manager, follow the steps below.
- Open Device Manager from the Start menu.
- Here, double-click on the Disk Controllers option to expand it.
- Right-click the drive with the error, and then click Uninstall device.
- After doing so, restart your PC and this will automatically reinstall the driver on your PC.
Final remarks: How To Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing Up In Windows 11
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