Best Buy carries external hard drives for laptops and desktops in different amounts of terabytes (TB) for a variety of uses. Whether you have a small number of personal files that you want to add to a backup disk or a large amount of data that your laptop doesn't have room for, you're able to choose the amount of external hard drive terabytes for your specific situation, ranging from. Dec 23, 2020 The best USB-C hard drive enclosure: Ineo Shockproof external hard drive enclosure USB-C connections are commonplace on modern laptops and are beginning to appear on desktop chassis, too. Western Digital is arguably the most popular external hard drive manufacturer in the world, and they have a solid reputation for quality and reliability. They also have the widest range of styles and capacities on the market. The WD My Passport Portable USB 3.0 External Hard Drive has password protection and auto backup capabilities.
An external hard drive is a device that used to back up your most important files and data, but if it suddenly stops working or responding, don't worry. On this page, we'll focus on the external hard drive not working issue and you'll learn:
- Causes of External Hard Drive Not Working/Responding
- Part 1. Make Not Working External Hard Drive Detectable
- Part 2. Recover Data Before Fixing External Hard Drive With Not Working Error
- Part 3. How to Fix 'External Hard Drive Is Not Working/Responding' Error
Applies to: Fix external hard drive, USB drive, SD card, internal HDD/SSD, etc., not working or responding error on Windows PC.
Quick Guide - Fix External Hard Drive Not Working/Responding Error in 3 Parts:
Workable Solutions | Step-by-step Troubleshooting |
---|---|
Part 1. Connect Not Working External Drive | Change USB cable, USB Port > Change PC...Full steps |
Part 2. Restore Data | Run software > Scan external hard drive...Full steps |
Part 3. Fix Not Working External Drive | Method 1. Check Disk Error Method 2. Format External Hard Drive to NTFS Method 3. Create New Volume...Full steps |
No matter what brands of devices you are using such as WD Elements external hard drive, Seagate external hard drive, SanDisk or Toshiba hard disks, etc, just follow this article to get your problem solved with the provided methods here now.
Causes of External Hard Drive Not Working/Responding
Is your external hard drive suddenly not working for no reason? Is your external hard drive suddenly cannot be detected or recognized by your PC or laptop? Relax!
You don't have to buy a new external hard drive and give up all the precious data. First, check the causes that make your external hard drive not working:
- Problematic connection
- RAW, invalid or unsupported file system
- Drive letter conflict or no drive letter
- No partition
- Not initialized
- Outdated disk driver
- USB Root Hub is outdated
- Disk is physically damaged
- ...
Don't worry if you don't know what exactly causes your external hard drive not working. Continue reading, we've collected 100% working fixes here to help you fix the external hard drive to work normally again without losing any data.
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If you are having a similar issue on your hard drive, you may directly try the fixes below.
Are your hard drives, be it new or old, internal or external, not showing up in File Explorer or Disk Management? Follow to learn how to make your hard drive showing up again in Windows 10/8/7 without losing data.
Part 1. Make Not Working External Hard Drive Detectable
Applies to: Fix external hard drive not showing, not detected error due to connection problem.
Mostly, when your external hard drive suddenly doesn't work or fails to show up on your computer, you should first check the device connection between your external disk and your computer.
Now, follow to make the not working external hard drive detectable and show up on your PC again:
#1. Check and Change External Hard Drive Connection Cable
The first thing that you should do is to check the external hard drive USB connection cable:
- If the connection cable is loosened, reconnect external disk to PC and tight it.
- Is the external USB connection cable broken or damaged, switch a new cable, and reconnect the disk to PC.
#2. Change a USB Port or Connect to a New Computer
If the USB connection cable is not broken, try to reconnect the external drive to your PC via a new USB port and check if the computer detects your disk.
If still nothing shows up, change a computer and reconnect the external drive.
#3. Check Power Management for USB Hub
If it doesn't work after changing the USB port or cannot be read by a new PC, try the quick fix below to repair an unrecognizable external hard drive:
Step 1. In Run (Windows + R), type devmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
Step 2. Open Device Manager > expand 'Universal Serial Bus controllers'.
Step 3. Right-click USB Root Hub > Properties > Power Management > uncheck 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power'.
- Tip
- If your external hard drive is physically damaged or broken, take it to a nearby maintenance center for a manual repair.
After following the above 3 tips, your computer should be able to detect and recognize your external hard drive now. You can try to open the drive and access the data.
If you still cannot access the data, don't worry. Move to Part 2 and we'll offer you the best hard disk data recovery software to help you quickly access and restore all valuable data on immediately.
Part 2. Recover Data Before Fixing External Hard Drive With Not Working Error
After making the external hard drive detectable, we suggest you recover data from the drive first as some measures may bring secondary damage to your data on the disk. After this, we'll offer you some reliable methods to fix the external hard drive in the next part.
3 Steps to Recover Data from External Hard Drive
To recover data from your external disk, you'll need reliable HDD recovery software for help.
EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard with its powerful capacity allows you to scan and recover data from the external hard drive which is not working properly in only 3 steps.
See how to restore data from the external hard drive on your own:
Step 1. Choose the external hard drive
Since you're going to recover data from the external hard drive, run EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard and choose the exact drive where you lost data. Click Scan.
Step 2. Scan for lost data
The software will start immediately to scan all over the selected drive for all lost data. During the scan, you could see more and more data showing up in the results.
Step 3. Preview and recover data
After the scan is over, check the scan results for the desired data. You can preview the file by double-clicking on it. Click Recover and choose another location to save the recovered data.
Don't save the recovered data on your external hard drive before fixing and making it work normally again.
Part 3. How to Fix 'External Hard Drive Is Not Working/Responding' Error
Let's see how to repair the not responding external hard drive or undetectable external hard disk drive now.
To help you find the right fix for the 'external hard drive not working' error in Windows 10/8/7, please open Disk Management and check the state of your external hard drive:
External Hard Drive At Best Buy
- #1. Check and Fix Disk Errors on External Hard Drive - Disk Contains Corrupted File System Error
- #2. Format External Hard Drive to NTFS - Disk Shows RAW or Unsupported File System
- #3. Create A New Partition in External Hard Drive - Disk Displays as Unallocated
- #4. Assign a New Drive Letter to External Disk - Disk Shows as 'New Volume' with No Drive Letter
- #5. Initialize External Disk and Create a New Volume - Disk Is Unknown, Not Initialized
Method 1 to Method 7 can fix most external hard disk not working issue, and if none of them work, turn to Method 8 and Method 9 for help. Let's start the external hard disk repair process.
Method 1. Check and Fix Disk Errors on External Hard Drive
Applies to: Fix external hard drive not working due to unknown disk error or corrupted file system.
Mostly, when an internal or external hard drive contains an unknown error or corrupted file system, the Windows computer will not be able to detect or open the drive.
Here you have two options to check up the disk and fix internal errors on a not responding external hard drive:
Option 1. Run Partition Manager Freeware to Fix External Hard Drive Not Responding Error
Download and install EaseUS Partition Master Free on your PC.
Step 1. Open EaseUS Partition Master on your computer. Then locate the disk, right-click the partition you want to check, and choose 'Check File System'.
Step 2. In the Check File System window, keep the 'Try to fix errors if found' option selected and click 'Start'.
Step 3. The software will begin checking your partition file system on your disk. When it has completed, click 'Finish'.
Option 2. Run CMD to Manually Fix External Hard Drive Errors
Step 1. Type cmd in the Search box, right-click to open Command Prompt.
Step 2. Type diskpart and hit Enter.
Step 3. Type chkdsk /f /r /x g: and hit Enter to let the checking process to run.
Replace g with the drive letter of your external hard drive.
Step 4. When it's finished, type: exit and hit Enter to finish the process.
After this, your not responding external hard drive should now show up. If it still doesn't work, go on with an easier chkdsk alternative.
Option 3. Run CMD Alternative to Fix External Disk File System Error
The Command line is suitable for computer professionals since wrong commands can cause severe problems. Therefore, we strongly recommend you try EaseUS Tools M.
It is a practical computer fixing tool that is safe and light-weighted. To fix file system error or disk error:
If you don't have any technical know-how and want to minimize data risks, using third-party software could be a better choice. The Command line is suitable for computer professionals since wrong commands can cause severe problems. Therefore, we strongly recommend you try an automatic command line alternative.
EaseUS Tools M is a practical computer fixing tool that is safe and light-weighted. It's a perfect alternative to CHKDSK command. Use this one-click tool to solve your computer issues.
To fix file system error or disk error:
Step 1: DOWNLOAD EaseUS Tools M for Free and install it.
Step 2: Open the software and select the 'File showing' option.
Step 3: Choose the drive and wait for repairing. After the operation completes, click the 'View' button to check the drive.
Method 2. Format External Hard Drive to NTFS to Repair Not Working External Disk
Applies to: Fix external hard drive not working, detecting or responding error due to RAW or unsupported file system.
If your external or internal hard disk shows as a RAW or unsupported file system in Disk Management, the best way is to format the disk to a recognized format.
In order to make sure that the external hard drive is secure for storing new data again, you can format it to repair the not working drive to be usable again with Windows disk management:
Step 1. In Run (Windows + R), type diskmgmt.msc and hit Enter.
Step 2. Go to Disk Management, right-click the external hard drive, and select 'Format'.
Step 3. Choose a file system like NTFS or exFAT and tick 'Quick format'. Click 'OK' to start the formatting.
After this, your external hard drive is viable for saving data again.
Method 3. Create A New Partition in External Hard Drive
Applies to: Fix disk displays as unallocated in Disk Management that make external hard drive not working.
Mostly, when your external hard disk shows as unallocated, it means that there is no partition in the disk. As a result, the computer cannot recognize it. To fix this issue, you need to first recover data from the disk first (as shown in Part 2).
Then, you can follow the steps below to create a new partition, making the external hard drive working again:
Step 1. Connect the unallocated external hard drive to your PC and open Disk Management.
Step 2. Right-click on the unallocated space of the external hard drive, select 'New Simple Volume'.
Step 3. Set partition size, drive letter and file system (NTFS), etc.
Step 4. Click 'Finish' to complete the process.
Method 4. Assign a New Drive Letter to External Disk
Applies to: Fix disk shows as 'New Volume' with no drive letter that causes external hard drive not responding.
Step 1. Go to Disk Management and right-click on your external hard drive.
Step 2. Go and select a new drive letter by clicking 'Change', and click 'OK' to confirm.
Then not responding external hard drive can be read and detected now.
Method 5. Initialize External Disk and Create a New Volume
Applies to: Fix 'Disk Is Unknown, Not Initialized' that cause external hard disk not working nor showing up.
Step 1. Right-click 'My Computer' > 'Manage' to run Disk Management.
Step 2. Here, right-click the Unknow external hard drive and click 'Initialize Disk'.
Step 3. Select the disk(s) to initialize and choose MBR or GPT partition style, and click 'OK' to confirm.
Now the drive is recognized as unallocated and if you have vital data saved there, revert to Part 1 and apply EaseUS data recovery software for help.
Step 4. Then right-click on the unallocated space on your external hard drive and create a new volume on it.
Method 6. Update Disk Driver
Applies to: Force not responding external hard drive to show up and work by updating disk drivers.
Step 1. Right-click 'This PC' and choose 'Manage'.
Step 2. Click 'Device Manager' then expand 'Disk drives'.
Step 3. Find and right-click the problematic external drive and select 'Update driver'.
Step 4. Click 'automatically search for driver software online'.
Method 7. Uninstall Universal Bus Controllers
Applies to: Fix external hard drive not working issue by updating Universal Serial Bus controllers drivers.
Step 1. Open 'Device Manager', find and expand Universal Serial Bus controllers
Step 2. Right-click on the USB controllers of your external drive and select 'Uninstall device'.
Step 3. Repeat to uninstall each USB controller one by one. Then restart the computer.
While rebooting PC, Microsoft will automatically reinstall the USB controllers software for your not working external hard drive.
Method 8. Run Antivirus Software
Applies to: Fix virus or malware that causes your external hard drive not working.
Sometimes, viruses or malware infections may also cause your device to malfunctioning. So it is to your external hard drive. When you tried all the above fixes, but the drive is still not working, you can try to run antivirus software to unlock the drive:
Step 1. Install and run antivirus software on your computer.
Step 2. Scan and unlock the external hard drive.
Step 3. Wait for the cleaning process to complete and restart PC.
After this, reconnect your external hard drive to the computer and check if you can use it again.
Method 9. Turn to External Hard Drive Manufacturer or Repair Center for Help
The last option that you can try is to contact your external hard drive producer or a local disk repair center for help. It could be the outdated firmware or disk driver that is outdated. For this issue, your disk support team can resolve and make your disk work again.
As for external hard disk data recovery, a local disk repair center or manual data recovery service can do. Here you may also try EaseUS Data Recovery Service.
- 1. Unformat the drive
- 2. Repair the RAID, RAW disk or operating system
- 3. Recover lost partition (the one that cannot be recovered by software)
To Sum Up
On this page, we explained the causes of external hard drive not working, not responding, and not detectable error. To make things easy for you, we divided the whole process into 3 parts:
Part 1. Make external hard drive detectable; Part 2. Recover data from the external hard drive; Part 3. Fix not working external hard drive with respective solutions.
The methods offered in this article can also be applied to repair and fix SD cards, memory cards, USB drives, flash drives, or hard drive partitions, etc devices with not responding/working or undetectable issues.
It's recommended that you should create an extra backup of your files to another secure location, like Cloud drive. When you lost data on your disk, always remember to let EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard help.
Summary :
Do you know when to buy an external hard drive or a flash drive? MiniTool shows you the differences between external hard drives and flash drives and explains the underlying causes. Just keep reading to get the related knowledge.
Quick Navigation :
Many people may be planning to buy an external hard drive or a flash drive for some purposes. However, they may just have a shallow understanding of external hard drive vs. flash drive. If you also don't know the differences between external hard drives and flash drives, this post will help you.
Brief Introduction to External Hard Drive and Flash Drive
A flash drive, also called thumb drive and pen drive, is a miniature high-capacity mobile storage product that does not require a physical drive and uses flash memory as its storage medium, while an external hard drive, also called mobile hard disk, is a hard disk storage product that emphasizes portability and realizes large-capacity data exchange between computers.
The flash drive is usually integrated with a USB Type-A or a USB Type-C interface. Thus, you can plug it directly into your computer to use. However, the external hard drive usually needs a matching cable to connect it to your computer. Of course, the cable uses USB Type-A or USB Type-C interface, too.
External Hard Drive vs. Flash Drive
Capacity
In general, the external hard drive has larger capacity comparing the flash drive. The main reason lies in the storage media. As we all know, the flash drive only uses flash memory as its storage medium, while the external hard drive has more options.
The external hard drive can be divided into two types: external HDDs that use magnetic platters as storage media, and external SSDs that use flash memory as storage media. As we all know, the price of flash memory per GB is higher than that of magnetic platter per GB. Therefore, manufacturers usually like using magnetic platters to produce large-capacity storage device.
This post explains that HDDs still play an important role.
On the other hand, just comparing the external SSD and the flash drive, the former also usually has a larger capacity. I have searched on Amazon and seldom found a flash drive with 2TB capacity. However, I can easily find a 4TB external hard drive on it. There are two reasons.
The first reason is that external SSDs can be equipped up to 32 NAND flash memory chips while flash drives just have 1 or 2 flash memory chips. The more the flash memory chips, the larger the capacity.
Another possible reason is that they have different usages (this point will be explained later).
Awesome External Hard Drive Amazon
Performance
In general, the performance of external hard drives is better than that of flash drives. If comparing external HDDs and flash drives, as normal, external hard drives are much faster in bulk data transfer while USB flash drives may be faster when transferring small bits of data.
However, when it comes to the performance of flash drive vs. external hard drive SSD, flash drives have no advantages.
There are mainly 4 reasons as to why flash drives perform worse than external SSDs.
1. Transport protocols: If you search in Amazon, you'll find there are still many USB flash drives using USB 2.0 protocol, while most of external hard drives have switched to using USB 3.0 protocol. USB 2.0 has a maximum transmission bandwidth of 480 Mbps, namely 60 MB/s, while USB 3.0 has a maximum transmission bandwidth of up to 5.0 Gbps, namely 500 MB/s.
2. Master control: Like SSDs, external SSDs use master controls with excellent quality, while USB flash drives usually use master controls with bad quality.
In general, in order to improve read and write speed, SSDs and external SSDs usually adopt multi-channel mode, which allows master control to operate multiple flash memory chips in parallel through several channels (just like RAID 0).
SSD master control can allow SSDs to increase the number of parallel channels to 4 or up to 8. However, flash drive master control usually supports 1 or 2 channels.
On the other hand, the USB main control lacks some important technologies, which will affect USB performance and lifespan. These technologies include TRIM, wear leveling, etc. Without TRIM technology, the USB flash drive writing speed will become slower and slower.
3. Flash particles: As we all know, there are currently three main types of flash memory particles: SLC, MLC, and TLC. SLC means that each storage unit can store 1 bit of data; MLC means 2 bits; TLC means 3 bits.
On the one hand, storing more data in each unit allows manufacturers to create larger-capacity products with fewer flash memory chips; on the other hand, this will slow products' speed.
Flash drives usually use TLC, while external SSDs usually use MLC or even SLC.
4. Cache: Cache is actually a DRAM memory chip that is used to balance the speed differences between high-speed and low-speed devices, for example, memory and hard disk. It can temporarily store disk data that is accessed more frequently, thus reducing actual disk operation. In this way, users will feel that disk read and write speed is getting faster.
External hard drives, including external SSDs, are generally equipped with cache while flash drives are generally not.
If you are interested in the performance of external hard drive vs. flash drive and want to test them, you can get a detailed guide from the following post:
This article explains how to measure disk performance and how to interpret the disk performance test result. It touches upon terminology like IOPS, transfer rate, sequential reading/writing, random reading/writing, and queue number.
Lifespan
Generally speaking, flash drives have a shorter lifespan than external SSDs. If writing data slightly frequently, many flash drives may only be used for one or two years, but this phenomenon seldom appears on external hard drives. The reasons are as follows:
1. Some external hard drives are made of HDDs. For HDDs, as long as the mechanical parts do not go wrong, they can read and write data all the time. As for NAND flash, it has a limit on the number of writes. Once the number of writes reaches this limitation number, the USB flash drives or external SSDs will be worn out.
2. The flash drive master control does not have wear leveling technology. In NAND flash, some blocks are updated frequently, while others are not. This will make the frequently-updated blocks worn out more quickly and affect the service life of flash drives and external SSDs.
However, external SSDs have wear leveling technology while flash drives don't have. The wear leveling technology is an algorithm integrated into the firmware of the master controller, making each storage block used averagely to avoid some specific storage blocks from forming bad blocks due to overuse.
3. Flash drives have lower capacity than external SSDs. In general, the smaller the capacity, the faster the NAND flash will be overused.
To understand the lifespan comparison between external hard drives and flash drives more thoroughly, you can refer to this post:
This post shows you how to check your SSD's lifespan and gives you advice on increasing SSD life and dealing with SSD failure.
Durability
In light of durability, USB flash drive wins definitely. The external HDDs have accurate mechanical parts that are easy to be damaged, while flash drives don't have. As for external SSDs, they perform much better than external HDDs in durability but still worse than flash drives.
Portability
Apparently, flash drives are more portable than external hard drives. The reasons lie in two factors: size and weight.
External hard drives can be divided into three types according to their sizes: 3.5-inch desktop hard drives, 2.5-inch notebook hard drives, and 1.8-inch mini hard drives. Their weight is also reduced in order.
But anyway, flash drives have smaller sizes and lighter weights than external hard drives. The flash drive is small and light enough to be put into a pocket like a key ring charm, or stringed on a neckline. Therefore, it's more portable.
Price
In general, the price of external hard drives is higher than flash drives due to its larger capacity, better performance, etc. However, there are some high-quality flash drives whose capacity and performance are comparable to external SSDs. Such flash drives are more expensive than external hard drives, including external SSDs.
Use
Due to the above characteristics of external hard drive vs. flash drive and the fact that external hard drives can be managed more flexibly in Disk Management than flash drives, they have different uses.
If you want a portable storage medium to transfer small files like documents, photos, etc., or you want to make a bootable disk, the USB flash drive will be a good choice.
To know more uses of flash drives, you can refer to this post:
This article tells you how to use a flash drive step by step. You can use it to store data, recover files, kill virus, install operating system, and update firmware.
If you want a storage device to back up your important data, you should choose external HDDs. Finally, if you want a portable storage device to storage games or want to create a portable operating system like Windows to go, I will recommend external SSDs to you.
To know more uses of external hard drives, you can refer to this post:
The guide on how to use an external hard drive is displayed in the post. An external hard drive is useful in many aspects such as files storage and data backup.
Some people may like to use a USB flash drive to create a portable operating system, but they may finally find that the portable operating system can't run or perform very bad. The reason is that the USB speed is very slow. Of course, if you have a high-quality USB flash drive, you can do that.
Manage Flash Drive and External Hard Drive Better with MiniTool Partition Wizard
Manage Flash Drive
If you plug a flash drive into your computer and open the Disk Management, you may find you can hardly manage it, except for formatting and deleting.
Open Disk Management and right-click the flash drive partition. Then you can get the following picture. In Disk Management, some options like Shrink Volume are grayed out.
However, MiniTool Partition Wizard, a professional partition management software, can offer more options to you.
Download MiniTool Partition Wizard and install it. Then, right-click the flash drive partition and you will get the following picture. In MiniTool Partition Wizard, you can still use Move/Resize feature to shrink or extend the flash drive partition. In addition, there are other useful features offered to you.
Back up Data with External Hard Drive
If you want to use an external hard drive to back up your computer or a huge number of files, MiniTool Partition Wizard can help you do that easily.
To clone computer, you can choose Copy Disk Wizard (This is not free when the disk is a system disk). To back up partition with a huge number files, you can choose Copy Partition Wizard.
External Hard Drive vs Flash Drive FAQ
Bottom Line
Do you have any confusion about external hard drive vs. flash drive? Do you have problems in managing external hard drives or flash drives? Please leave a comment below or email us at [email protected]. We will reply to you as soon as possible.