[MasterJ]

Hello. I have an external hard drive purchased probably around 10 years ago. I am trying to access the hard drive to transfer the files elsewhere since the drive is so old. However, when I plug it in, the computer doesn't register it as an accessible hard drive. The hard drive is receiving power (the light turns on and you can hear/feel the hard drive disk spinning), and when I go to the Device Manager, the external hard drive shows up in the list for Disk Drives and under Universal Serial Bus Controllers, but it doesn't show up in File Explorer.

 

So far, I've done the following:

- Tried different USB ports on the computer

- Ran hardware and device troubleshooter

- Checked that drivers were up to date

- Unistalled and reinstalled the drivers

- Disabled the selective suspend setting

 

Any other ideas on how to access the files so that they can be transferred off of the hard drive?

 

Thank you in advance!

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Hello MasterJ,

 

What version of Windows are you running on the working computer.

[phillpower2]

Hello MasterJ,

 

What version of Windows are you running on the working computer.

[SpywareDr]

Best Answer

Is the external drive being assigned a drive letter? To check and see, press [WindowsLogoKey]+[R], type in diskmgmt.msc and press [Enter]. If the drive does not have a drive letter assigned, right-click the drive, select "Change Drive Letters and Paths...", click "Add", make sure "Assign the following drive letter" is selected, pick an unused drive letter from the pull-down on the right and then click "Ok". You should now be able to see that drive (letter) listed in File Explorer ([WindowsLogoKey]+[E]).

[123Runner]

That's my thought SpywareDr! A missing drive letter.

[phillpower2]

Looks like we may never know folks, I asked about the version of OS so that I could post the specific steps for getting a screenshot of Disk Manager which would have confirmed what you both suspect 

[SpywareDr]

With as many posts as the OP has, I would suspect they'll be back ... hope so anyway.

[MasterJ]

Hey all. Apologies for the delay. It's been my busy season at work, so a lot of things have fallen by the wayside. I used to be really active back around 2005-2006 in the malware removal forums, but have only been back a handful of times since.

 

Assigning a letter through disk management worked. Thank you!

[phillpower2]

Glad you got it sorted and thanks for letting us know that assistance was no longer required