Ways To Recover Undetectable Files From External Hard Drive With Windows 10 – Information Technology Blog

There might be instances where external hard drives of certain brands may not show up on Windows 10 PC or laptop. And, needless to say, if you are not able to see the external hard drive on your computer, how can you possibly recover data?

Let’s see how we can recover data from an external hard drive which is not detected by Windows 10

Why My External Hard Drive Not Showing Up On Windows 10?

There could be numerous reasons why your external hard drive is not recognized by Windows 10. Let’s quickly have a look a few of them –

• External Hard Disk inserted in wrong USB Port
• Faulty USB cable
• Wrong or corrupt file system on External hard Disk (for this you will be required to format the External Hard Disk)
• Issues with device drivers in Windows 10
• External Hard Drive is damaged
• Presence of malware or virus in the External Hard Disk

Recovering Data From External Hard Drive Not Detected By Windows 10

Rectifying The Issue Using The Disk Management Tool

If your external hard drive is not recognized by Windows 10, first check if it is showing up in Disk Management or not. For this plug-in your external hard drive and then follow the steps mentioned below –

1. Press Windows + R keys to open the Run dialog box
2. In the run dialog box type diskmgmt.msc
3. If you can locate your external hard disk in the Disk Management Tool then here are two things you may consider doing to make your external hard disk discoverable by Windows 10 –

(i) Right-click on the letter representing your external hard disk and then choose Change Drive Letter and Paths. Then, click on the Add button and use the drop-down choose driver letter you want to assign to the drive. Finally, click on OK

(ii) You may have to format your External Hard Drive so that Windows 10 can recognize it. But, in case you are unable to locate the external hard disk then you may have to find the reason so as to why Windows 10 is unable to detect external hard disk

Change The USB Port Or Try Another PC

In case your external hard drive is not detected by Windows 10, instead of immediately moving on with advanced measures, you can instead try and change the USB port or try a different USB cable. Also, you can try plugging in your external hard drive in some other PC. If this doesn’t work, you can move on to next steps.

Recover Data Using A Disk Recovery Software

Since recovering data is a priority, you can take an easier and sure-short route to recover data using a disk recovery software like Advanced Disk Recovery and recover all kinds of data – documents, images, audio files and all other kinds of files.

1. Download and install Advanced Disk Recovery
2. Select Hard Drive then select Drive
   
   
3. Click on Start Scan Now
4. Select Type Of Scan
   
   
5. Click on Scan now
6. Select the file that you want to recover
   
7. Click on Recover
8. Choose the folder where you want to recover data and click on OK

Note: For recovering data please choose a location other than previous location of the file to avoid read and write operation

Try Resolving Driver Issues

Quite possibly you are unable to recover files from External Hard Drive not detected by Windows 10 because your External Hard Drive has driver issues which can be resolved with ways mentioned below

Method 1: If you see a yellow exclamation mark surrounded by a triangle against the name of your External Hard Disk, here are things you can do

Method 2: Update Driver

1. Press Windows + R keys to open Run dialog box
2. Type devmgmt.msc for opening Device Manager
3. When the Device Manager window opens locate your External hard Drive by clicking on the Disk Drives dropdown
4. Right-click on it and then click on Update Driver

Windows will then search for drivers and install any new available driver.

Conclusion

We have taken into account some of the possible reasons why you might not be able to recover data from External Hard Disk which is not identifiable by Windows 10 and we have also seen some of the fixes that you can undertake to resolve the issue.

We highly recommend keeping a disk recovery software like Advanced Disk Recovery handy so that you can recover under all circumstances.

Do, let us know in the comment sections below which of the above fixes helped you resolve the issue. For more such content keep reading Tweak Library. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest and Flipboard. You can also subscribe to our YouTube Channel.