[SOLVED] New External HDD recognized by device manager but not disk management!! Why not visible?

[RT-PC20]

To all on community,
Looking for any help as to why a drive is not showing up on my PC.

Bought a brand new 5TB Seagate external HDD. When I plug into my desktop, the computer makes the "ding" sound when it is is plugged in, but the drive is no where to be found. The drive shows up in the device manager drives tab, but not in disk management. Also, when I click on the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" tab at the lower right corner of my windows screen, the drive shows up but there is no grayed portion showing a letter or name associated with it. When I am in the device manager tab it says the latest driver has been installed for this device. If I click on the device and the "properties" window appears if I click too many of the tabs the properties window freezes.

Also, I have noticed that when I plug this in to any USB port on my desktop, my computer wont restart or power off, or power on. Meaning, if the computer is on and working fine, I plug in the drive but it doesn't show up, so I then go to turn off or restart my computer from the start menu and it begins to shut down but never fully does, it tries for a while but then I get the Windows 10 blue screen frown face 🙁 saying the computer froze. I then have to force a shut down by holding down my power button. When I then hit the power button to turn the computer back on, if the drive is connected it wont, it will try to start but inevitably go back to the blue screen frown face. It will only turn back on if I disconnect the drive.

As an fyi I tried a suggestion I found on the web pointing to the Windows Storage spaces/storage pool as an issue. When I navigate to this though, the drive doesn't appear, so I cant attempt to format it.

Having said all that, when I plug the drive into my laptop w/ win 10, it works just fine.

Not sure why this is happening. If anyone can please help, that would be much appreciated.

Thanks!
Rob

 

[RealBeast]

Plug it in, then go to disk management. There click on the drive to initialize (GPT) and then format it NTFS. It will then show up in the Windows Explorer.

And always eject the device before unplugging, as USB storage during a write will corrupt the boot record and it will show up as RAW.

 

[RT-PC20]

How can I do that? Where would the initialize GPT option be?
But as I said before nothing shows up on the the disk management window. The drive is non existent there, so there is nothing to format.

 

[RT-PC20]

Plug it in, then go to disk management. There click on the drive to initialize (GPT) and then format it NTFS. It will then show up in the Windows Explorer.

And always eject the device before unplugging, as USB storage during a write will corrupt the boot record and it will show up as RAW.

Also in regards to ejecting it; I try to do that via the "Sefely Remove hardware..." tab but it doesnt work, its as if the computer sees it but cant work with it, so it never actually says the device is safe to remove.

 

[RealBeast]

How can I do that? Where would the initialize GPT option be?
But as I said before nothing shows up on the the disk management window. The drive is non existent there, so there is nothing to format.

If disk management shows nothing, open an elevated command prompt (right click run as admin) and type:
diskpart <enter>
list disk <enter>
select disk n (when n=the 5TB drive) <enter>
clean <enter>
convert gpt <enter>
create part primary <enter>
exit <enter>

Then you should be able to format it in Windows Exporer

Once it is formatted you will be able to eject it.

 

[RT-PC20]

If disk management shows nothing, open an elevated command prompt (right click run as admin) and type:
diskpart <enter>
list disk <enter>
select disk n (when n=the 5TB drive) <enter>
clean <enter>
convert gpt <enter>
create part primary <enter>
exit <enter>

Then you should be able to format it in Windows Exporer

Once it is formatted you will be able to eject it.

I definitely appreciate the help, but unfortunately neither option worked. I went into disk management via computer management but the drive still isn't visible.

I just tried going into the command prompt too, and it also does not show the correct disk under list disk. It shows all my other drives.

In all this, I also unplugged a separate external drive that I have on my pc, and attempted the steps from this USB port since I know for sure it works. But no good. I don't understand.

 

[RT-PC20]

You can try the below methods to make your external hard drive accessible:

Method 1: Gain administrator permission

Step 1: Open This PC, right-click the inaccessible external hard drive and select "Properties".
Step 2: Go to Security, click "Advanced" and "Owner".
Step 3: Click "Edit" and click your username under Group or username.
Step 4: Check all boxes under Allow column, click "OK" to confirm and "Apply" to keep all changes.
Reboot PC and reconnect the external hard drive.

Method 2: Update the external hard drive driver

Step 1: Connect the external hard drive to the PC.
Step 2: Right-click on This PC/My Computer icon, select Manage and go to Device Manager.
Step 3: Expand Disk drivers, find and right-click on the external hard drive, choose "Update driver".
Step 4: Select "Search automatically for updated driver software" and wait patiently till the process completes.
Reboot the PC and reconnect the device.

Method 3: Check and fix file system errors

Step 1: Press Windows + R keys simultaneously to invoke Run. Type cmd in the empty box and hit Enter.
Step 2: Type disk part and click OK to bring it up.
Step 3: Type chkdsk G: /f /r /x and hit Enter.
Exit the command prompt and safely eject your external hard drive. After some time, try reconnecting it and see if you can open it normally.

Method 4. Format external hard drive, change file system to NTFS

Hope it will help you out.

wejip thanks for the options but to no avail.

Method 1: As I had mentioned, the drive doesn't show up in the normal file explorer tab like all the other drives. If it did, I could presumably right click the drive and select properties- from there I could navigate to the Security tab (which is amidst the other 7 tabs-Previous Versions, Quota, Customize, General, Tools, Hardware, and Sharing). Unfortunately though I can only see the drive being recognized in the Device Manger. When I right click it here and select properties the tabs are different. They include General, Policies, Volumes, Driver, Details, and Events, No Security tab to click on.

Method 2: I've tried numerous times to see if there is a more updated driver to download, but every time windows comes back with "The best drivers for your device are already installed". It does also continue to say "There may be better drives on Windows Update or on the device manufacturers website".

Method 3: Tried this but did not work.

Method 4: The drive originally came loaded with exFAT, however I did reformat it to NTFS. I did this from my laptop since that recognizes the hard drive. I plugged it back into my desktop and repeated all the above methods, but still no luck.

 

[RealBeast]

The drive originally came loaded with exFAT, however I did reformat it to NTFS. I did this from my laptop since that recognizes the hard drive.

Then plug it back into the laptop and use diskpart to clean it, then attach it uninitialized into the desktop and use disk management.

 

[RT-PC20]

Then plug it back into the laptop and use diskpart to clean it, then attach it uninitialized into the desktop and use disk management.

Hopefully this maybe helps in trying to diagnose.
I cleaned the disk in the diskpart. Exited. Then ejected from the laptop and did notice that there was no longer a drive letter assigned to it.

I then plugged it into my desktop and the computer immediately shutdown and went to the blue screen 🙁 saying "Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. We"re just collecting some error info...."

As soon as the computer rebooted to the windows login screen it immediately went back again to the blue screen 🙁

I had to disconnect the drive and turn the computer back on.

 

[RealBeast]

Hopefully this maybe helps in trying to diagnose.
I cleaned the disk in the diskpart. Exited. Then ejected from the laptop and did notice that there was no longer a drive letter assigned to it.

I then plugged it into my desktop and the computer immediately shutdown and went to the blue screen 🙁 saying "Your device ran into a problem and needs to restart. We"re just collecting some error info...."

As soon as the computer rebooted to the windows login screen it immediately went back again to the blue screen 🙁

I had to disconnect the drive and turn the computer back on.

You lost the drive letter on the laptop after the clean -- that is to be expected because it was uninitialized then.

I expect that you have tried other USB ports and have the external drive power plugged into an AC circuit that is live.

At this point I would clean it again on the laptop and then use the laptop disk management to initialize GPT and also format it in NTFS on the laptop. Then run Seatools for Windows on the external drive to insure that it passes. If so, try it again on the desktop.

 

[RT-PC20]

You lost the drive letter on the laptop after the clean -- that is to be expected because it was uninitialized then.

I expect that you have tried other USB ports and have the external drive power plugged into an AC circuit that is live.

At this point I would clean it again on the laptop and then use the laptop disk management to initialize GPT and also format it in NTFS on the laptop. Then run Seatools for Windows on the external drive to insure that it passes. If so, try it again on the desktop.

No Dice.
I did the GPT in the command prompt, formatted the hard drive back to NTFS. Ejected, then plugged into desktop. Still not being recognized. Since I formatted it, the pc does stay on but it still doesn't see the drive in disk management. Only partially visible in device manager as before.

The external drive doesn't have a power source its a portable drive. The seagate backup plus portable.
I tried to download the seatools for windows from their site but it looks like that portion of the site is down. When you click on it, even the link you sent me, it says 403-forbidden.

Would there be some coding error in my computer? It must somehow be related to the fact that my pc crashed as soon as I plugged it in when the disk was cleaned and wasn't partitioned in any way.

I seriously appreciate the time and help here. Thanks!

 

[RealBeast]

HERE is the main download page for Seagate, as their Toolkit and Seatools both give me 403 errors today too. You should contact their support by email to get a download valid link HERE.

If you are only getting power through a USB connection, make sure that it is USB 3.0. I find that external drives with a separate power supply are more reliable than using the small amount from a USB connector.

The contact page also has information on doing an RMA if needed.

 

[RT-PC20]

Device was faulty. Returned it and picked up another Seagate drive. Problem Solved!
Thanks for all the help!