External hard drive shows up on device manager but not on disk management or my computer! help!!

hm337

Reputable
Jul 1, 2014
1
0
4,510
I was watching a movie from my external hard drive on my macbook, the film suddenly stopped playing and my computer froze. The computer then went to sleep therefore the box saying drive wasn't safely ejected came up.

when i tried to plug it back in nothing came up, i tried disk utility to check if it was on there and still nothing. i even waited a while as sometimes it can just appear.

the hard drive makes quite rolling noises, and still lights up

I then moved onto plugging it into a pc computer where it makes a noise once connected, doesnt show up on my computer or the desktop, and not on device manager.

However one flicker of hope is that i found it on device manager and also when you go onto control panel it is in amongst the devices (next to printers). after searching through the settings of these areas I am stuck with how to make this back into how I normally use it (as a file)

Please help!!
 

firespasm

Honorable
Jan 24, 2014
76
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10,660
You are already playing material from the drive via your mac-book so I'm assuming its mac formatted. So no need for any other software to read it on a mac. if the drive is NTFS formatted then you will need macdrive or something similar to connect to a PC. If you wanted to read an NTFS (window formatted) drive on a mac you would need something like Paragon software. Is the drive powered by your computer via USB (bus powered) or does it have its own power source from a plug? I would suggest trying a different connection if your external drive supports that, sometimes drives cant get enough power via a USB connection and will cut out.

Other issues could be the USB ports on your macbook or the drivers in your system to read that drive. pull up the specification sheet up for your external HDD and go through that with regards to system requirements.

I would then use disk software to scan for unreadable or bad blocks of data on the disk, corrupted files etc, you can use AJA Kona system test or another disk utility to test. Also dependent upon your external HDD warranty taking the HD out of its external enclosure and making a direct connection will get around a potential poor I/O board on your external HDD.

If the disk spins when plugged in and makes a ticking noise, you should put it in the freezer for a few hours(not directly) covered with something that wont stick to the drive like a plastic container and plug it back in and have another go.

Hope that Helps