External hard disk is not displayed – what to do?

If your external hard drive is not displayed on your computer, this can be due to various causes. Here we tell you what they are and how to solve the problem.

External USB hard drive is not displayed: Check hardware problems

If your hard drive is not recognised, it may be due to a hardware problem.

• The hard disk may not be connected properly or the USB port may be defective. Therefore, test the hard drive on several USB ports of your computer.

• The USB cable may also be defective. If possible, try a different cable.

• For some hard drives, it is also necessary to connect a power supply unit for the power supply in addition to the USB cable.

• Make sure that you use the correct power supply unit. You can tell that power is being supplied to the hard drive by the lights that are on.
  

  Hard disk detected in disk management: What you can do

  If the entry for your external hard disk appears in the disk management, a hardware problem has already been ruled out. There are several possible solutions to ensure that the storage medium is also displayed in Explorer.

  • If the entry “Unallocated” appears on your hard disk, you must first initialise the data medium.
    In the new window you can choose between GPT and MBR for the partition style. In most cases, “MBR” is recommended. Only with very large hard disks of 2 terabytes or more should you select “GPT”.
    • Once this has been done, you only need to allocate the storage space. To do this, right-click on the storage space and select “New Simple Volume”.
    • Follow the steps of the wizard and confirm at the end with “OK”.
    • A missing drive letter can also cause the problem. To fix this, right-click on the external hard drive entry and select “Change drive letters and paths”.
    • Then click on “Add” and select a drive letter. Confirm your selection with “OK”.

    Hard disk not recognised in disk management: Solutions

    If your external hard drive does not show up in Disk Management, missing drivers may be responsible.

    • To check this, open Device Manager from the Windows Start menu.
    • Right-click here under “Drives” on the entry for your external hard disk
    • Select “Update Driver”.
    • Alternatively, you can also completely remove the faulty driver via the “Uninstall device” entry. After restarting Windows 10, the current drivers should install automatically.
    • If this also has no success, the hard drive is probably broken. In this case, you can buy a new hard disk for little money. We have put together a list of recommended external hard disks in our best list.
      
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