Issues with my external hard drive

Hey there.

I'm having trouble with a Seagate Expansion drive.
When I plug it into my laptop, the blue light comes on like it should, but it doesn't show up in "My Computer."
It shows up fine in "Devices and Printers," and if I check "Properties," it says "This device is working properly."
I've tried updating the drivers—uninstalled them and reinstalled them—but still nothing.

I'm no tech expert, so I'm open to any suggestions you might have.😁

The drive is 500 GB and it's pretty much packed with data, so losing it would be a disaster.

Thanks.😁

Linda Barrett48 said:Hi there!

I'm having trouble with my Seagate Expansion.
When I plug it into my laptop, the blue light comes on just fine, but "My Computer" doesn't show anything at all.
It shows up under "Devices and Printers," and when I check "Properties," it says "This device is working properly."
I tried updating the drivers, then uninstalled and reinstalled them, but still nothing.

I'm not exactly a tech expert, so I'd really appreciate any advice you might have. 😁

It's a 500 GB drive and it's almost completely full, so losing this data would be a nightmare.

Thanks! 😁

It looks like Windows hasn't assigned a Drive Letter to the disk yet (this happens more often than you'd think with external drives). You should try assigning one manually via the Control Panel - Admin Tools - Computer Management - Storage - Disk Management - right-click on the external drive - Change Drive Letter.

When you're dealing with external drives or thumb drives, things can get messy fast due to the mix of USB protocols, internal components, or even just how much power the USB port actually puts out.

You didn't mention which laptop you're using or which specific port you're plugging into. You really ought to be using a USB3 port, assuming the drive itself is USB3. The cable needs to be USB3 too—these headaches pop up all the time when people try to use old USB2 or USB1.1 cables.

Try plugging the drive into a desktop PC that has a USB3 port along with a proper USB3 cable. That’s the only way to tell if the drive and the cable are actually working. And please, stop messing around in Computer Management if you don't know what you're doing; you could wipe your data permanently. Also, ignore any pop-ups saying the drive needs to be formatted—that's a trap that'll kill your files, usually because Windows just can't recognize the media properly. Take the drive to someone who actually knows their stuff, but seriously, find someone competent, not some guy who's just going to screw it up even more...

The only thing you can really test on your end is trying a different USB port or checking the properties of your USB ports. Laptops often throttle power to save battery, which causes issues. If that's happening, low-power stuff like thumb drives will work fine, while larger drives that crave more juice will just fail.

Even if the drive is actually dead (which I doubt), there's a way to recover data if it's critical. It costs money, but it's worth it if the info is vital. If you go that route, stop poking at the drive so you don't make a bad situation worse. But again, I don't think that's your problem here.

darkowl72 said:With external drives and thumb drives, you can run into issues with the mix of USB protocols, internal components, or just how much juice they pull from the USB port.

You haven't mentioned which laptop you're using or which specific USB port you're plugging it into.

I've tried all three ports on my laptop plus one on my TV, and it’s the same story everywhere. I'll try a desktop tomorrow.
Basically, it worked fine for about two years and then just quit on me out of nowhere. 🤷

Susan Mendoza said:Use Computer Management—right-click the external drive and select Change Drive Letter

Here’s what I’m seeing in Computer Management:



From what I can tell, it isn't even showing up in the top list, so I can't exactly change the Drive Letter if it's invisible.
The 931 GB Disk 1 should be appearing down in the bottom section.

Exactly. And you can't do squat with it because Windows won't even recognize it for some reason. Don't touch those disk settings; you could lose everything in a heartbeat. Windows is going to prompt you to allocate that space or create a new partition—do that, and it's bye-bye to your data...

If the drive was working fine before, it might just be dead. It happens. Depending on how much this stuff matters to you, you've got a few options for recovery. On an external drive, it could be anything from the electronic circuitry or the power supply to the actual disk itself. If the drive is actually okay, try pulling it out of the enclosure and plugging the bare drive directly into a computer. That'll work if the issue was just the housing electronics or the power adapter.

If the drive is totally fried, you can mess around with various data recovery software programs, which sometimes manage to salvage at least a piece of the puzzle. But, if your data is genuinely critical, the smartest move is to take the drive straight to a professional and pay someone to pull the data for you. Prices aren't as astronomical as they were a few years back, so just weigh the cost against how much those files are worth to you.

There are a few data recovery firms in New York City; check their rates and see who offers free diagnostics. Let the pros figure out what's wrong with the drive, for example:

darkowl72 said:There are a handful of data recovery outfits in New York City. Check their rates and find one that offers free diagnostics. Let them take a look at the drive to see what's actually broken, like this:

Good grief, do NOT send it to that shark over at Infolab. That guy sets his prices based on what kind of car you drive and what industry you work in. He once tried to charge a lawyer friend of mine $1,500 just to recover a deleted partition.

Those guys from Sweden have proven themselves to be a solid, honest company.

Honestly, paying a specialized recovery firm for this feels like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. You can handle this with Hiren's boot CD or some other software tool.

It all comes down to how critical the data actually is. Personally, I’ve never needed services like this, so I don't have any firsthand experience with these firms. Based on what I found online, Helpdesk is charging $233 plus tax for a logical failure, while Infolab is looking at about $125 plus tax.

That's the baseline I'm working from. Up until now, there hasn't been much chatter or many complaints about anyone in this group.

The diagnostic is free anyway, so there's no harm in checking with both of them—or maybe even someone else...

Linda Barrett48, you might want to try swapping out the USB cable first. Looking at the screenshot you shared, it looks like either the partition table was wiped or the MBR is corrupted. Fixing that should bring your partition back to life.

Susan Mendoza said:Linda Barrett48, try swapping out the USB cable. Based on that screenshot, it looks like the partition table is wiped or the MBR is corrupted. Fixing that should bring the partition back to life.

Thanks. That was my first thought too, I just need to track down a new cable somewhere.

I pulled the drive out of its enclosure and plugged it directly into my PC. It sounds fine—spinning normally without any clicking or grinding noises—but the computer just isn't seeing any data.

Linda Barrett48 said:Thanks, that’s actually what I was thinking of trying first. I just need to track down a cable somewhere.

I finally popped the drive out of its external casing and plugged it straight into my PC. From what I can hear, the thing spins up perfectly fine—no clicking or grinding sounds at all. The weird part? The computer just isn't seeing any of the data.

Give the direct cable connection a shot. If that doesn't work, you might have to call in a pro to figure out what's actually going on with the drive. Honestly, the tools on Hiren's boot CD should be enough to handle this. In my experience, it sounds like an invisible partition issue. If you can fix the partition table or the MBR, Windows should pick it right up.

I found this procedure online for similar situations (how to recover a lost partition):
http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-...allocated.html

http://findandmount.com/

I’ve used this hundreds of times. It usually does the trick, even for the messy stuff—there’s a full version floating around on torrent sites if you need more muscle. The real advantage here? It doesn't perform any permanent write operations on the drive. It just mounts the partitions so you can grab the data. That’s key. You don't want to trigger some permanent action with unknown consequences and turn a bad situation into a total disaster.
Just watch your step with the drives. Especially if you're dealing with a multi-drive setup like the one in that photo. One wrong click and you’ve made recovering data ten times harder. As long as they haven't been reformatted and you haven't overwritten them with new files, you can almost always pull everything off. But it’ll be a massive headache.

Look, if you’re using any tool that touches partitions—especially on a machine with multiple drives (like that setup in the screenshot)—double-check every single click. Triple-check it. Trust me, being careless can turn a simple fix into twenty hours of grueling data recovery work on a drive that wasn't even broken to begin with (specifically that "disk 0" in the image). 😁

Good luck. This tool should mount those partitions from the drive, letting you move the data elsewhere before you start messing around with the hardware itself.