Windows 10: Hard Drive not being recognized on file explorer

I had an old laptop and removed the hard drive and made it an external HDD. I set it up and everything was good. However, after a while, it stopped working and doesnt show up in explorer anymore. I have tried new cables and new enclosures, nothing works. The hard drive still revs when plugged in and can be seen on Device Management.I have tried to initialize it in the disk management and it didn't work. Now the option is greyed out. I think it is offline but when i try to change that I get "The request failed due to a fatal device hardware error". I don't know what else to do. I would really l

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Windows 10 1909 Causes Secondary Hard Drive to not be Recognized

Installing the Windows 10 1909 Update causes my secondary hard drive to not be recognized.

Steps to confirm issue:

• Secondary drive not visible in Windows Explorer
• Secondary drive not visible in device manager
• Secondary drive not visible in disk manager

Steps to replicate issue:

• Installing 1909 update

Steps to resolve issue:

• Uninstall 1909 update

Since updates can only be delayed for so long, an actual fix would be appreciated.

 

Hard drive not recognized Windows 10

Hi Curtis,

Thank you for posting in Community.

We understand your concern and we will provide the assistance you required to resolve the issue.

Before we proceed, I would like you to provide the information stated below:

1. Is the portable hard drive connected to your PC via USB cable?

2. Did you get any error message that the drive was not recognize by your PC?

For now, I would suggest that you check if the USB cable that connects the hard drive and the PC is not damaged. If not, then I would suggest that you connect your hard drive to another PC and check if the device is recognized in that particular computer.

If the device gets recognized, then I would suggest that you connect the external hard drive, open File Explorer and check if the drive has an assigned letter. If not, open Disk Management while the drive is connected to the system and follow the steps below.

1. Right click on the Start Menu and select Disk Management

2. Right click on the external drive>Select New Simple Volume and
assign letter to the drive.

Hope this helps

 

External Hard Drive

Hi John,

We suggest that you try the troubleshooting steps below:

• Open your External Hard Drive file in File Explorer.
• Type the name of the file you want to search on the search box and click Enter.

The file will show up in Search Results and you will be able to move it to the correct folder.

Let us know if you need further help.