Recovering Files When External Hard Drive Is Not Recognized

How Does External Hard Drive Work?

Under normal circumstances, external hard drive will be recognized as a removable device and it can be shown in "My Computer" once it is connected to computer. If the Windows recognized the external hard drive as unknown USB device, the external hard drive can’t work properly. If you encounter with such problem on your external hard drive, you can try to look for the possible reasons by following methods.

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Reasons Why External Hard Drive Is Not Recognized

1. Windows Operating System
Do you think that you can always use an external hard drive as long as your computer has a USB port? No, whether you can use an external hard drive also depends on if the Windows OS support it.

2. There is something wrong with the USB port
If the USB port is disabled in the BIOS, it will cause external hard drive notrecognized problem. Besides, if the USB port is damaged or the there is a USB port power supply shortage, the external hard drive will also not be recognized by computer.

3. Remove external hard drive improperly from the computer
Usually, it is highly recommended you to remove external hard drive from your computer safely when all related programs have been closed. Moreover, if the external hard drive can be recognized before but it is not recognized sometimes, you can delete the Unknown USB Devices under system devices and unplug the external hard drive. When you restart the system and reinsert the external hard drive, the problem may be solved.

4. There is something wrong with the external hard drive
If the external hard drive is physically damaged due to some reasons, the external hard drive will also be not recognized by computer. In this case, you only have to change a new external hard drive. What is more, if there are bad sectors on external hard drive, the not recognized problem may also occur. You can perform an error checking to check if the external hard drive has bad sectors.

How to Restore Data from Not Recognized External Hard Drive?

Sometimes, you may find it difficult to know the reasons why external hard drive is not recognized. It seems like that everything is fine but the external hard drive doesn’t work. Perhaps, you are care more about the data inside the drive than the external hard drive itself. Good news is as long as the external hard drive is not physically damaged, data can always be recovered with externaldrive recovery software. 

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