Windows 10: Why have my external hard drives suddenly stopped showing up in my computer?

I have Windows 10, 64 bit., professional.I have an HP notebook computerA few weeks ago my notebook stopped recognizing the external hard drives -- I have three of them, all WD exteral, between 1 and 3 TB. I use a few for back ups.All three stopped working at the same time so something changed in the settings, and I am at a loss as to what. This also happened about the time I noticed my notebook started freezing. Usually at night. My notebook is only 18 months old and pampered, so this should not be happening. It is an HP probook.I think it is in the settings, but am at a loss where to look. C

:)

 

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.

 

External Hard disk suddenly stopped showing in explorer

Hi everyone,

I have a 1TB WD My Passport Ultra external hard disk and it was reading and writing fine until i tried to use that hard disk as a virtual drive for fresh installing Windows 10 in my laptop. I have downloaded Media Creation Tool to create bootable installation media for my hard disk by downloading ISO file. After that I did not install that version and then when i checked my 1 TB hard disk was showing only few GB (if i remember less than 10 GB of space). When i checked in disk management total space split into 2 and i deleted one which is the less than 10 GB one i mentioned before . Now External HDD shows in Device Manager as proper device name and I'm even able to "safely remove USB drive" using the windows utility.

Now the situation is I can see the hard disk in disk management, safely remove USB drive and also in the WD utility software ( but it shows not writable). I cannot see in My Computer and neither read or write is disabled.

I tried couple of things myself by going to disk management.

I went to format and tried changing the file system to NTFS and also exFAT. but both time same result..... Please help me with that.

 

external hard drive

Hi Chrpee,

If you can't find external hard drive on Disk management than the next step is using the diskpart via command line, please follow the steps below:-

On the keyboard hit ((Windows logo key + R key)) than type ((CMD))

Now the windows command line will appear, the next steps is to type ((diskpart))

After that type ((list disk)) to show you the list of hard disks with partitions

If you found your external hard drive one of the list than you need to type ((select disk number)), note: the number is a disk number

Once you selected the hard disk or partitions than type ((clean))

than type ((create partition primary))

than type ((select partition 1))

than type ((active))

than type ((format fs=ntfs quick))

than type ((assign))

last type ((exit))

Check if the external hard drive appeared, if not please see the link below for more info and let me know if you need any assist

https://uk.pcmag.com/dvd-burners/120624/what-to...