Windows 10: external hard drives

I have two external hard drives I used on two different computers. On both computers I backed up all information onto the external hard drives before installing windows 10 on both computers. I was running windows 7 on both computers before the installation. On both computers I cannot get the computers to recognize the external hard drives when plugged in the USB. All USB plugs work with anything else plugged in.
I done a search in the forum and found many other people had the same problem. I went through all the advise given and none of advise worked for me. After about 16 hours of actual working time trying to get the information from my external hard drives I am at a loss and desperate. I am loosing money every day my backup is not connected.

My question is: can I take the hard drive disk out of the external hard drive and buy a hard drive cradle and try to see if my computers will read my backup that way.
The information on these external hard drives is too important to lose. That is why I am asking before I take the external hard drives apart.

:)

 

How can I restore an external hard drive backup to a new external hard drive?

Original Title: Terrill Shanks

How can I restore an external hard drive backup to a new external hard drive?

I have all my photos on an external hard drive. Every month I hook up the external hard drive before my automatic back up and the external hard drive becomes part of the weekly back up.

My Photo external hard drive is acting up and I need to install (copy) the last back up to a new external hard drive.

All the back up file folders are Zip files. My C:\ drive is backed up first then the H:\ drive which is my external hard drive. Zip file # 15 contains the last part of the C:\ Drive files and starts the H:\ drive back up.

Can I just copy the Zip file folders that contain the H:\ drive to the new external hard drive and unzip them? If not, can I use the computer restore program to copy the files I want to the new external hard drive?

Thanks for any information you can provide regarding this problem.

Terrill -- my e-mail address is *** Email address is removed for privacy ***

 

external hard drives

Okay, the disk does not appear to be connected. The first thing we need to check is if it isn't a physical damage that has made the drive unusable. Can you try plugging it in a different computer and see if it works there?

 

Can you remove one of the hard drives and add it as an internal HD? Welcome to 10F by the way*Smile

 

Welcome to TenForums @kaju

Not if they are WD external drives, WD directly solders the drive into the unit. See the pictures here...
portable hard drive, seagate or western digit of better quality build?

Anyway, that is unlikely to be the problem as both drives were apparently working before the upgrade to 10. To help further, plug both drives into one of the PCs, then post screenshots of Device Manager with the disk drive section expanded, and of Disk Manager.

Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of
How to Upload and Post Screenshots and Files at Ten Forums

 

I have not opened the external hard drives yet. I do not want to mess up anything. I do not even know what they look like. If they are the big type to go into a desktop or if they are the small type to go into a laptop. One computer is a laptop the other is a desktop.

 

If they are sealed then what Bree said is correct. My external drive is a WD but it is in a Rockwell HD enclosure that allows me to remove it. Try removing as many devices out of your PC's USB ports and then try the drive in each port that is available. In device manager does it show any ? or errors?

 

Yes I have tried that and there were no errors.

 

We need further information, otherwise it's all just a guess. A screenshot of Disk Management with both drives connected would be a start.

 

Have you tried the drives on a third computer to make sure they're ok?

If you don't have any access to a third one, you could try a linux live disc. If they work, you could at least copy the files until a proper solution is found.

 

I have 2 Iomega (USB3) drives that worked on 7 and will not work on 10. They still work (on the same hardware) when running MacOS or Linux. Windows 10 definitely has an issue with some brands of USB3 drives (whereas the Intel driver on 7 was more relaxed). I find they do still work on USB2 but some of my laptops don't have USB2 ports.

They also work when I unplug the actual disk and plug into a different enclosure (I didn't buy a new enclosure I just swap the disks around in the various external drives I have).

Like @Bree said that may not work if they are WD and the drive is soldered to the enclosure but in my experience it is worth a go. If you open it and can pull out the sata cable you can stick the drive in something else and try. It certainly works for me and it doesn't mean your drive is bad.

 

I have a WDC 2.0TB SATA drive in front of me that came out of an External USB case, works just fine in a 2-drive BlacX dock I frequently use to recover data from IBM Travelstar [spun off to Hitachi now HGST], WDC, Seagate and Maxtor drives. As has been mentioned it was the PCB interface that died. The added PCB on those was not soldered to the drives interface [IDE]. I've taken several apart up to that 2.0TB to reclaim the drive without problems but they were the WDC My Book models, maybe the smaller WDC Passports do it differently. I also use USB adapter kits to access PATA drives from older computers.

 

This would help a great deal.

 

You could try enabling automount and rebooting, which will bring the external disks online and keep them online through subsequent reboots. Enabling automount can be done by opening a Command Prompt window and invoking the following commands:

DISKPART
automount enable
exit

 

On the left lower corner of each post there is a my computer arrow.
1) Please click on this arrow > click on update your system specs and add second system so we can see information about the laptop and desktop.
How To Fill Out Your System Specs:
How To Fill Out Your System Specs
System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums:
System Specs - Fill in at Ten Forums Windows 10 General Tips Tutorials
System Info - See Your System Specs - Windows 7 Help Forums

2) When you updated from Windows 7 to Windows 10 was the first update to 1703 or had these drives been working with 1511 or 1607 before upgrading to 1703?

3) Looking at probabilities having two drives go bad and become totally unreadable at the same time is very low on the list unless they were both dropped on the floor. Higher on the probabilities is that there is a driver or compatibility issue. Please confirm that the drives were never in a RAID configuration.

4) Please let us know whether the drives are readable on another windows 10 computer.

5) And if possible the best test is to see if they are readable on any windows 7.0 or 8.1 computer. Maybe a friend or local business is still using windows 7.0. Please let us know whether you can test the external drives in this fashion and if you can please post the results into the thread.

6) For the rest of the steps please connect both external drives to the same computer and make sure that they are connected using USB 2.0 ports (black) (not USB 3.0 ports (blue))

7) First turn each computer off and with the 2 external drives attached to USB 2.0 ports boot to the bios and see whether they are recognized in the bios. Some computers (HP computers) have bios UEFI diagnostics to check hard drives. If you can check the drives using the diagnostics please do so. Some drive testers can only work on internal drives and others can work on external drives. For HP I don't remember whether the UEFI diagnostics can check external drives but its worth a shot.

8) please use a camera or a smart phone camera to take bios pictures of the drives and post images into the thread for each the laptop and the desktop.

9) Open disk management and post an image into the thread (both external hard drives attached to USB 2.0 ports) for each the laptop and the desktop.

10) Open device manager > click view > click show hidden devices > look for the disk drives > expand to view internal and external drives or any yellow triangular icons and post images from each computer with both drives attached to USB 2.0 ports into the thread.

11) Open file explorer > this PC > with both drives attached to USB 2.0 ports post images from each computer into the thread

12) Open control panel > large or small icons > troubleshooting > left pane click view all > run hardware and device troubleshooter while both external drivers are connected to USB 2.0 ports > view detailed information > post into the thread images of anything that was fixed or could not be fixed.

13) In summary please post images of each the bios, disk management, device manager, and file explorer with both external hard drives attached to USB 2.0 ports.

14) If the drives can be seen on the computers and if they work on any other computer then driver or compatibility issues can be troubleshooted