Can't access my External Drive

[Sid Cowans3]

I have an external Seagate Drive that shows up in my Windows 10 desktop Device Manager under Disk Drives as "Seagate Desktop USB Device" and it states "Working Correctly" but it doesn't show as a drive in Explorer/MyPC.

I can feel vibrations suggesting the drive is alive and the drive light is on but I can't get to it.

Have tried different USB connections without change. Have tried uninstalling and rebooting without change.

Any ideas ?

 

[SchizTech]

Is the drive formatted? What do you see in Disk Management (right click Start, in the menu go to disk management)?

Is this a drive you've used before or a new one, and has it been used with a mac? If it's Mac formatted Windows won't read the files on it, meaning it would have to be reformatted for Windows. Formatting does delete any information currently on it.

 

[Sid Cowans3]

It is a used drive with archived material on it and has never been used with a MAC. It does not appear in Disk Management albeit I do get a pop-up for a drive I don't recognise that is asking me to initialise it ..... I obviously don't want to do that and I'm not even certain it is the drive in question.

The drive has only been accessed on rare occasions in the past but has always worked fine.

 

[SchizTech]

Well if you unplug the drive and go back to Disk Management and don't get a popup message to initialize a drive, that definitely makes the external drive the one it's not reading.

I can suggest a utility to run a diagnostic check on the drive: http://www.seagate.com/support/downloads/seatools/?locale=en-US&name=seatools-win&vgnextoid=552bd20cacdec010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

If the stuff currently on the drive is important, you can try data recovery software to recover it. https://www.piriform.com/recuva

If there's no need to recover what's on it you might format it and see if it works (though after this I wouldn't trust it)

 

[Sid Cowans3]

Good idea - thanks !

Yes it is the drive ..... the Disk Management "initialise" pop-up only appears if I have the Seagate plugged in to the USB port.

I've also noticed that it takes a long time to load up data in Disk Management when the drive is connected. Also, when I reboot the PC with the drive connected, it takes five times longer than when I reboot with it not connected.

I have Recuva on my PC but it can't help as it presumably won't see the drive.

 

[SchizTech]

By that description it sounds like a failing drive. Data recovery is worth a shot (a good utility will see drives that don't appear in explorer and might not even display properly to disk management).

Either way, it sounds like you'll need a new backup drive. You might also consider cloud backup.