Troubleshoot An External Drive

Although adding an external drive should be easier than adding an internal drive, sometimes these devices, too, do a disappearing act on your system after you’ve connected them. If this happens to you, first check to make sure everything is securely connected. A USB device that is not plugged in correctly is a common cause of an undetected drive. An external drive should appear if you verify its presence with the Device Manager and Disk Management. However, if your external device still isn’t appearing in My Computer, try this solution, which carries the Device Manager check a bit farther.

First, with your system turned off, disconnect the drive from your system and then power up your computer. Next, open the Device Manager. From the View menu, choose Show Hidden Devices. If your external drive is a USB device, you should see three items listed in the Device Manager: the name of the drive under Disk Drives, the name of the USB host adapter, and USB Mass Storage Device under Universal Serial Bus controllers. If you see these items, right-click each of them and choose Uninstall from the context menu. Restart your system if you are prompted to do so.

Now, with the external drive still disconnected from your system, plug it into a power source and turn it on.Be patient and let the drivefully initialize, waiting for it to stop making the spinning noise normally associated with a drive that is in the process of initializing. Finally,
connect the external drive into your PC and see if it appears in My Computer.

(Smart Computing)