A USB flash drives stores all the data in its memory similar to a hard drive. The operating system can, later on, fetch this data when required to be accessed. There can be various issues that may turn your USB drive data inaccessible such as if the drive is unmounted improperly from the port then it can lead to data corruption. Another reason for the stored data corruption can be invalid data in the Master Boot Record (MBR) or Partition Boot Record (PBR) or directory structure on the USB drive.
Right-click the icon of the USB flash drive and “Eject”. Then remove the drive from the USB port. Then remove the drive from the USB port. Hopefully, this would help you solve the problem else you can try recovering your USB data using a professional usb drive data recovery tool. Use the Notification Area on the Taskbar. How to eject external hard drive on Windows 10?
There can be various other reasons also that may make your USB corrupt or unresponsive. This may happen either due to logical corruption or physical corruption. Some common physical corruption issues are broken stems and connectors, dead drives (no power supply), broken circuit or NAND gate, not recognized, RAW, need to format, not accessible, and Dead Drives, etc.
On this same screen, you can access the USB storage device and safely eject it if you ever want to remove it. Simply tap on the arrow to the right of the USB drive. On the next screen, tap on “Safely Eject USB Device”. Safely remove USB drives. USB Disk Ejector is a good, free software only available for Windows, that is part of the category Software utilities. More about USB Disk Ejector. USB Disk Ejector is a fairly light program that doesn't take up as much storage space than the average program in the section Software utilities. The best method to avoid unexpected ejections is safely ejecting the drive when you are done using it. Use one of the methods listed below to eject an external drive: On the desktop right-click the drive then choose Eject “Drive Name” On desktop, drag the external drive to the Trash.
How to Recover Data from an Inaccessible USB Drive?
To recover data from an inaccessible USB or Flash drive, first, you must be able to identify the exact reason leading to the problem while reading the USB drive.
Reasons of USB corruption or inaccessibility can be because of:
Recovering Files from Logical Issues
If there are some logical/ software errors with the USB drive, you can easily fix it. You need to repair the file structure so that the USB flash drive can be used again.
This is how you can scan for logical issues using Windows:
If you are using Windows 10 or a lower version then carry out the following steps to repair the USB Flash Drive:
Hopefully, this would help you solve the problem else you can try recovering your USB data using a professional usb drive data recovery tool.
Most data loss issues can be solved by using a professional USB flash drive data recovery software. You can free download such program and install it on your PC to begin scanning the device and recover data. Try Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows that supports scanning of large capacity USB drives and traces inaccessible or formatted files with their attributes and size intact.
How to Recover Files From a Corrupt USB Flash Driveusing Stellar Data Recovery Professional?
You may restore your important files, documents, pictures, and more from a corrupt USB flash drive easily with the help of the best data recovery software i.e. Stellar Data Recovery Professional. This DIY software can retrieve all types of files from a corrupt, inaccessible, or formatted USB drives.
You just need to follow the given steps to get back your data:
1. Download & install Stellar Data Recovery Professionalon your Windows PC.
2. From the ‘Select What to Recover’ screen, click Everything or select specified data, and click Next. [See Image 1]
3. On Recover From screen, choose the drive and click Scan. [See Image 2]
4. The scanned results will show on the screen. You may preview the files before recovering them.
5. Select the files you want to restore and click Recover. [See Image 3]
6. Browse and choose the desired location to store your retrieved data. [See Image 4]
[Caution:Do not save the recovered data in the same USB drive. Always use another drive or storage media to save this data to avoid data overwriting.]
7. Click Start-saving and wait till the process is complete. [See Image 5]
Now that you have safely recovered the files from the corrupt USB flash drive, proceed further to fix USB drive corrupt due to logical reasons with the following methods:
Recovering Files from Physical Issues.
If you have a physical error such as a broken connector, circuit board, NAND memory chip of the drive, then the hardware needs to be replaced or repaired. Doing-it-yourself can lead to even worse situations. Better you get help from the experts in this area. You can hire any trusted data recoverycompany like Stellar Data Recovery which is specialized in recovering data from a physically damaged USB drive.
Below we have mentioned solutions to some common causes of physical issues with your USB drive.
a. Broken Stems and Connectors, & Dead Drives (no power to the USB):
A common indication of the physical errors is some kind of error messages or troubles that you see after connecting the USB. Common error messages are “Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk” or “USB Device Not Recognized or Malfunctioned”, “you need to format the disk before using it”, RAW partition, dead or unresponsive drives, and damaged controller chips and/or circuit boards.
If the silver USB connector is broken or the circuit board is damaged it leads to power supply cut-off to the USB. In such case, soldering and circuit repair is required. It’s not advised to do it yourself as if anything goes wrong, you may permanently lose access to your USB and also it’ll reduce the chances of getting your data successfully recovered or sometimes impossible. To deal with above physical errors, specialized equipment and expertise are required. So better you hand over it to some professional and let them deal with the scenario.
b. Error: “Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk”:
This error occurs when the flash drive controller software becomes corrupt. It can also happen if there are some issues with the NAND memory. The above error can be caused by low grade or generic NAND memory chips. With a frequent number of reads and writes, the state of the drive turns worse.
The error indicates that there is some issue with the NAND memory chips. Most probably the metadata stored in the NAND memory is corrupted or wiped and it can’t be mounted then, thus turning the drive unreadable. Whenever you try to read the drive, you will get the error message “Please insert a disk into Removable Disk”. Also, if you try to check the drive size, it usually shows its capacity as 0 MB. As the device cannot be mounted on windows, if you check Device Manager under Disk drives, a different name for the USB drive will be listed. Also, the Disk Management shows a drive letter with No Media.
In such case, you need to search for manufacturers that perform USB data recovery or flash drive data recovery.
c. Undetectable USB Flash Drive:
You may not be able to use your USB drive because of some problems with the USB port, not with the USB drive. So, before performing any repair of the USB drive also make sure that the USB port is working fine.
To test the USB Port remove the USB drive, reboot your computer, and test the USB drive again. See if it works. It is possible that one port may not be working but all others are working fine. So try each port of your computer. If this doesn’t help, try the USB drive on some other computer.
Sometimes, the Installed copy of Windows OS may not be able to recognize your USB drive due to some USB version limitations.
You can fix an undetectable USB Flash Drive by drive recognition:
After this, you need to assign the drive letter. To do so follow given steps:
If this fails, Windows automated “Fix it For Me” service can resolve the issue. If this also doesn’t help, then modifying the system registry will help you tackle the issue. We wouldn’t suggest you go for this option as it may harm your OS.
Conclusion
A USB Drive can become corrupt or unresponsive by any way of Logical or Physical issues. However, you can always securely use a professional USB data recovery tool like Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows to recover files after your USB Drive becomes Corrupt or Unresponsive.
In case of any query, do let us know in the comment section below!
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External hard drive not showing up? Windows doesn't recognize external hard drive? How to make such drives appear in Windows so as to access the files in it? In this post, we show you the most feasible solutions as well as more approaches that could help you recover data from external hard drive not appear.
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While scanning forums, we find so many users are bothered with the external hard drive not showing up issue. Here is one typical case we extract from ccm.net:
Q: Seagate external hard drive not showing up in my computer
Are you also troubled by hard drive not showing up? Have you got the effective workaround? If not, we give you 10 possible reasons as well as solutions to help you address this issue.
A USB flash drive may also fail to be recognized by Windows 10, but don’t worry, you can fix the problem and recover data from it in most cases.
You might also be interested in Hard Drive Space Is Missing? Take These Ways to Find It out
Tip: The content below also applies to hard drive/USB/flash drive not showing up. We strongly recommend you download and install free partition manager- MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition, which will be of great help for Case 1 - Case 5.
Case 1. The hard drive is not initialized
This usually applies to new hard drive not showing up. If you are using a brand new hard drive, please check out if this hard drive needs initializing. You may go to Windows Disk Management and have a check. If Disk Management shows the disk as 'unknown/not initialized' and pops up a window asking you to initialize it, this new hard drive really needs initialization before you can use it. Then, you will have to create new partitions on it to make the new hard drive appear on computer.
To make things easy, use MiniTool Partition Wizard to help you. Detailed steps are shown below:
Step 1. Run MiniTool Partition and choose Create Partition.
In this main interface of this free partition manager, distinguish the new hard drive by viewing the hard drive information. Since a new drive has no partition, please select the unallocated space and choose Create Partition from the action panel.
Step 2. Customize the new partition.
In the pop-up window, specify the partition label, partition type, drive letter, file system, cluster size, and partition size. Then click OK.
Step 3. Click Apply on the top left corner to start.
Tip: In MiniTool Partition Wizard, all new drives are regarded as MBR disk by default. Hence, you can go ahead and create new partitions on the external hard drive. But if you want a GPT disk, you can select the brand-new external hard drive and employ Initialize to GPT Disk feature at first.
When you have created new partitions on the new drive, go to File Explorer to check. These should remove new hard drive not showing up error.
Case 2. The hard drive has no drive letter
External hard drive not showing up also occurs when the partition on the external hard drive has no drive letter. To make the hard drive show up, you just run MiniTool Partition Wizard and add a drive letter to it.
Case 3. Hard drive is hidden
If the hard drive is hidden by some partition manager, it won't appear in File Explorer. However, this time you cannot fix this issue by simply add a drive letter to it. You should use that specific partition manager or MiniTool Partition Wizard to unhide that partition.
But how do you know the hard drive is hidden or not? Usually, hidden drives also have no drive letter, but cannot be fixed by adding a drive letter. You can open Disk Management, right-click the partition that has no drive letter, and see whether the feature 'Change Drive Letter and Path…' is greyed out.
If this feature is greyed out indeed, you can use MiniTool Partition Wizard to help.
Case 4. Partitions are lost
If all partitions on the external hard drive are lost due to some reasons like virus attack and corrupted partition table, the external hard drive not showing issue occurs. In this case, the first trying is to recover all lost partitions by using MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro (not supported in the Free Edition).
Step 1. Go to Partition Recovery feature.
Run MiniTool Partition Wizard to the main interface. Then right-click the external hard drive and choose Partition Recovery from the tool bar.
Tip: Please observe the partition style of the hard drive which suffers from partition loss. MiniTool Partition Wizard shows all empty drives as MBR disks. If the hard drive should be GPT disk in fact, please use Convert MBR Disk to GPT Disk to turn the drive back to GPT before you choose Partition Recovery.
Step 2. Choose scanning range.
Select the scanning range such as the full disk, the unallocated space only or specify the scanning range and click Next. It is recommended to choose 'Full Disk' or 'Unallocated Space' if you do now know the specific starting LBA and ending LBA for the lost partitions.
Step 3. Set the scanning range.
Choose Quick Scan first. If this does not work for you, the go back to choose Full Scan.
Step 4. Check all partitions you need.
After a while, MiniTool Partition Wizard will list all partitions it has found. Here you can double-click a partition in the list to check the files in it. After confirmation, check all partitions you want to restore. Please note that partitions not checked will be lost and MiniTool Partition Wizard cannot help you that time.
Step 5. Confirm the operation by hitting Apply.
Tip: To make the recovered partition appear in Windows, you still need to add a drive letter to that partition. Read How to Add Drive Letter to get the detail.
If MiniTool Partition Wizard fails to find the lost partitions for you, you can try professional data recovery software which helps recover data from lost partitions. Luckily, MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate just comes with such a powerful function. And you may just follow the guide below to have a try.
Step 1. Go to Data Recovery.
After installing this data recovery software, run it to get the main interface. Then right-click the partition of the external hard drive to choose Data Recovery.
Step 2. Check files you need.
MiniTool Partition Wizard will immediately start the scanning process and list the found files as well. During this process, you can unfold each partition folders to check what files are the one you need. Please make use of the Preview feature to help you determine when it comes to TXT files and images. However, to get the best disk recovery result, it is recommended to wait for the completion of the scanning.
Step 3. Save files.
Tick the ones you need and press Save to store the selected files to a safe location. Note that you should choose another disk instead of the external hard drive to be recovered.
When you have finished data recovery, you can recreate new partition on the drive to cope with hard drive won't show up issue.
Case 5. Unsupported or RAW file system
If the external hard drive has unsupported files system or hard disk become RAW, the partition bar won't show up in Windows File Explorer. You can only see the drive icon and drive letter there. If you try to access the drive, Windows requires formatting.
To fix this issue, you need to recover data from the external hard drive first, and then reformat the hard drive with FAT/NTFS file system. Please refer to Case 4 and use MiniTool Power Data Recovery (Damaged Partition Recovery) to help you recover data. Then use MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition to do the formatting.
Case 6. Drive not enabled in the BIOS
If hard drive is not showing up in Disk Management and Device Manager, it may be because it is not enabled in System Setup (BIOS). Some motherboard manufacturers disable unused ports in the BIOS by default, which is the common reason for the 2nd hard drive not showing up in Windows 10/8/7. You will need to enter BIOS to verify their current states and make sure all hard drives are enabled. Note that different computer manufacturers have different methods to enter system BIOS, please check your system documentation for specifics.
Case 7. Faulty cable or port
If the data cable is damaged or the connection is incorrect, the BIOS will not detect the SATA cables and can sometimes fall out of their connection. Be sure to check your SATA cables are tightly connected to the SATA port connection. The easiest way to test a cable is to replace it with another cable. If the problem persists, then the cable is not the cause of the problem.
Case 8. Troubleshoot drivers
Usually, Windows offers hard drive drivers and the manufacturer of your SSD may also have released some drivers to support your disk. However, it is possible that they are the causes of your hard drive not showing up problem. If the driver you use is outdated or problematic, you need to disable or uninstall it. If you are not familiar with the process, use professional driver tool to help you get rid of the worries.
Case 9. Virus attack
Some malware or viruses can lead to hard drive not showing up issue. It is possible that there are such malware or viruses on your computer. In this case, please run security software on your computer to scan out and remove these malicious programs. Then, check if Windows doesn't recognize external hard drive issue still persists.
Case 10. Faulty hard driveEjecting A Usb On Windows10
If you have completed the above checks and the external hard drive is still not showing on your computer, you should send the hard drive to repair center and check whether it fails. If it is still in the warranty, please proceed to begin a warranty replacement.
We also recommend reading our guide Quick Fix 'SSD Not Showing up' in Windows 10 without Data Loss.
SummarySafely Remove Hardware Icon Missing Win 10
Above are the top 10 situations as well as the solutions for new hard drive not showing up/external hard drive not showing up. You may just have a try and see if they are helping. We hope you will never take the last one. If you have any questions or better suggestions, let us know by tying them in the comment section below. Or you can contact us via [email protected].
External Hard Drive Not Showing Up FAQ
How To Safely Eject Usb From Macbook
How do I fix my WD external hard drive not showing up on my computer?
How To Safely Eject Usb From Macbook Pro
Usually, you can access any partition of your external hard drive by opening This PC. Alternatively, you can open Disk Management, select a partition on the external hard drive and click Open from the context menu.
How do I find my external hard drive on Windows 10?
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