How to Recover Data From Undetectable External Hard Drive

Sometimes there is a situation when an external media drive or a hard drive goes undetectable. External drives are not far from corruption, and they also get corrupted. This could be the reason for the inaccessibility of the data and for all the inconvenience we face. To recover data from these undetectable external hard drives, I’ve provided some methods which are easy to apply, and you can perform them easily.

There could be various reasons for the inconvenience with the external drives. So, before starting let’s see why External Hard Drives or Media Drives go undetectable, and we face issues like Externa Hard Drive isn’t Detected by the system.

Top 5 Reasons Why External Hard Drive Is Not Detectable

Some of the core reasons for this issue are listed below:

• Abrupt system shutdown.
• Physical damage to the media drive.
• Due to virus or malware attack.
• Abrupt teardown of the drive without ejecting it.
• System file inaccessibility or deletion.

These could be the reason for the inaccessibility/undetectability of the hard drive. There will be no warning or pop up about the issue, and you will not get notified about that. Or you may see a message on your screen that “You need to format disk E: before you can use it. Do you want to format it now?“ when you connect the disk.

If you click on the format disk, then all the stored data will be removed. So don’t click on the format disk button. If you face an issue like this, then go for the below methods.

How To Recover Data When External Hard Drive Is Not Detectable

Before going for any professional help, it’s recommended to go for the below method:

By Changing The Assigning Letter For The Drive:

There is a big chance that by changing the drive letter, there is a big probability that the issue will get resolved. This could be done using the “diskmgmt.msc”. It will allow you to change the drive letter. Follow the below steps to change the drive letter of the external drive:

Step 1. Press Win+R key and type “diskmgmt.msc”. Then hit the Enter Key.

Step 2. now, right-click on the external drive and select the “Change Drive Letter and Paths”.

Step 3. In the freshly arrived window, click on the Change button.

Step 4. Select a Drive letter and click on the Ok button.

Step 5. Restart the computer and re-insert the drive. Check whether it is accessible now or not.

If the disk is not detectable or accessible than go for the below method.

Recover Data from Undetactable External Hard Drive Using the Recovery Utility

You can opt for the Windows Data Recovery, which can be used to recover corrupt and inaccessible data from External hard drives, SD Cards, USBs, DVD, CD, Physical Drives and other media storage. It can easily recover any physical disk of the system, whether it is FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, and NTFS5 partition.

You can follow the below steps to recover data using this utility:

Step 1. Download and launch the utility.

Step 2. Select the drive to recover and opt for the recovery mode.

Step 3. Soon the software will generate the preview of the recoverable data.

Step 4. Now, select the saving location or define a path to store the data.

Step 5 Hit Yes when it says, “Do you want to save deleted files?”.

Step 6. Soon all the recovered data will get saved on the desired location.

Step 7. Hit the OK button and exit.

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Conclusion

You can also take some precautions to save the data from corruption or some issue like this. You can use an antivirus, always eject the disk before tearing it down and always try not to abruptly shut down the system or apps. In this way, you can save your external drive data and if any corruption occurs, then use the above methods to recover data from undetectable external hard drive or media storage. I hope it helped you out.

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