Fix Toshiba External Hdd Not Recognised In Windows 10 Repair Guide

Difficulty

Moderate

Steps

6

Time Required

                          1 hour            

Sections

1

• Fix: Toshiba External HDD not recognised in Windows 10
• 6 steps

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What you need

Step 1

              Check for driver updates               

• Press Windows + R, type “devmgmt.msc” into the Run dialog, and press OK. Expand Disk drives. Right–click the external hard drive and choose Update Driver Software…
• If there are any updates, follow further instructions and your hard disk driver will be updated.

Press Windows + R, type “devmgmt.msc” into the Run dialog, and press OK. Expand Disk drives. Right–click the external hard drive and choose Update Driver Software…

If there are any updates, follow further instructions and your hard disk driver will be updated.

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Step 2

              Solution 2 - Change Drive Letter and Path               

• Experienced users will check whether their external hard drive shows up in Disk Management when they find Windows doesn’t detect it. To open the Disk Management tool, you can right-click This PC (or My Computer in Windows 7) and choose Manage in the context menu to enter Computer Management, and then select Disk Management on the left.
• Once the drive letter is missing, Windows cannot recognize this drive but we can see it in Computer Management window. Now, we have to assign a drive letter to the HDD to make Windows recognize it.
• Right-click the external hard drive, and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths…
• Click Add, and then pick a letter for the drive and click OK.

Experienced users will check whether their external hard drive shows up in Disk Management when they find Windows doesn’t detect it. To open the Disk Management tool, you can right-click This PC (or My Computer in Windows 7) and choose Manage in the context menu to enter Computer Management, and then select Disk Management on the left.

Once the drive letter is missing, Windows cannot recognize this drive but we can see it in Computer Management window. Now, we have to assign a drive letter to the HDD to make Windows recognize it.

Right-click the external hard drive, and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths…

Click Add, and then pick a letter for the drive and click OK.

Step 3

              Solution 3 - Partition the drive               

• If you see the external hard drive which is not recognized by Windows is full of “unallocated space,” you’ll want to create a new partition on it. This will allow Windows and other operating systems to recognize and use this HDD.
• As we know, different tools like Windows Disk Management tool, diskpart commands, Free Partition Magic like MiniTool Partition Wizard, and others can help to create partition.
• I recommend you to see this video to do it with Windows Disk Management Tool

If you see the external hard drive which is not recognized by Windows is full of “unallocated space,” you’ll want to create a new partition on it. This will allow Windows and other operating systems to recognize and use this HDD.

As we know, different tools like Windows Disk Management tool, diskpart commands, Free Partition Magic like MiniTool Partition Wizard, and others can help to create partition.

I recommend you to see this video to do it with Windows Disk Management Tool

Step 4

              Solution 4 - Initialize Disk               

• As we know, if you connect a new Toshiba external hard drive to your PC, your Windows may not recognize it because it has not been initialized. Open Disk Management. (Press Windows + R on your keyboard to launch the Run dialog box. Type “diskmgmt.msc” into the box and press OK.)
• Right click on the name portion of the disk entry, where it says Disk [#]. Select Initialise Disk from the right-click context menu. And then, you will be given detailed operating prompts. Just do as told.
• Note: during the initialization process, you’ll be prompted to choose whether you want to use a Master Boot Record (MBR) or a GUID Partition Table (GPT) for the partition style of your Toshiba external hard drive. Here, in my opinion, if the capacity of your Toshiba HDD is over 2TB, you had better choose GPT, for MBR can support up to 2TB disk.

As we know, if you connect a new Toshiba external hard drive to your PC, your Windows may not recognize it because it has not been initialized. Open Disk Management. (Press Windows + R on your keyboard to launch the Run dialog box. Type “diskmgmt.msc” into the box and press OK.)

Right click on the name portion of the disk entry, where it says Disk [#]. Select Initialise Disk from the right-click context menu. And then, you will be given detailed operating prompts. Just do as told.

Note: during the initialization process, you’ll be prompted to choose whether you want to use a Master Boot Record (MBR) or a GUID Partition Table (GPT) for the partition style of your Toshiba external hard drive. Here, in my opinion, if the capacity of your Toshiba HDD is over 2TB, you had better choose GPT, for MBR can support up to 2TB disk.

Step 5

              Solution 5 – Formatting it to NTFS               

• If your Toshiba external hard drive has been partitioned with the wrong file system, you will also encounter the “external hard drive not recognized” issue. For instance, you may have formatted the drive with the ext4 file system from Linux or the HFS Plus file system from a Mac. Or, you drive file system is damaged and shows as RAW.
• However, Windows cannot recognize these file systems, thus Windows cannot recognize your external hard drive.
• First, recover important files from the external hard drive that is not detected by Windows. Second, reformat this drive with the newer NTFS file system or older FAT32 file system so Windows will be able to recognize it.

If your Toshiba external hard drive has been partitioned with the wrong file system, you will also encounter the “external hard drive not recognized” issue. For instance, you may have formatted the drive with the ext4 file system from Linux or the HFS Plus file system from a Mac. Or, you drive file system is damaged and shows as RAW.

However, Windows cannot recognize these file systems, thus Windows cannot recognize your external hard drive.

First, recover important files from the external hard drive that is not detected by Windows. Second, reformat this drive with the newer NTFS file system or older FAT32 file system so Windows will be able to recognize it.

Step 6

              Solution 6 – Run Anti-virus Program               

• To guard against malware infections causing issues, first scan your computer, if clean scan the external drive.
• Disable auto-execution for external USB then do the scan before attempts to back up or recover.  You don’t want to include any viruses. This step should occur as soon as the drive is visible to Windows.

To guard against malware infections causing issues, first scan your computer, if clean scan the external drive.

Disable auto-execution for external USB then do the scan before attempts to back up or recover.  You don’t want to include any viruses. This step should occur as soon as the drive is visible to Windows.

To reassemble your device, follow these instructions in reverse order.

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                                                                                      11 other people completed this guide.                                             

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                                      with 8 other contributors 

                    Michael Luo                     

Member since: 05/30/2018

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Basic Phreak - Mar 20, 2019

Reply

All of the solutions revolve around the fact that diskmgmt.msc registered the device. My computer detected there was something in the USB port, just didn’t know what it was.

iffbas - Jul 3, 2019

Reply

Thanks for the 0 pictures guide.

Really useful ( not )

• Use pictures in the future or your guides likely become useless.

Seems the guide is out dated but I cant be sure because there is no freaking pictures…its 2019..come on man….not 1998 any more.

stephen Messina - Jul 15, 2019

Reply

mine kept coming up with “redundant cycle error” and it wont do anything

Dustin Senkbeil - Aug 6, 2019

Reply

My drive doesn’t show up in any of these solutions. The only place it shows up is I. Computer Management>Disc Drives.

Harrison Wetherby - Nov 22, 2019

Reply

Great little series of potential fixes (and if someone can read, they don’t need pics), but unfortunately, like some others, my brand new drive doesn’t show up anywhere at all. It was formatted on an 8.1 machine using Macrium with which I cloned a drive, which I am fairly certain was an NTFS type format. But, nada. Win 10 sucks again.