External Hard disk suddenly stopped showing in explorer


  1. samuob
    Posts : 2
    windows 10
       New #1

    External Hard disk suddenly stopped showing in explorer


    Hi everyone,

    I have a 1TB WD My Passport Ultra external hard disk and it was reading and writing fine until i tried to use that hard disk as a virtual drive for fresh installing Windows 10 in my laptop. I have downloaded Media Creation Tool to create bootable installation media for my hard disk by downloading ISO file. After that I did not install that version and then when i checked my 1 TB hard disk was showing only few GB (if i remember less than 10 GB of space). When i checked in disk management total space split into 2 and i deleted one which is the less than 10 GB one i mentioned before . Now External HDD shows in Device Manager as proper device name and I'm even able to "safely remove USB drive" using the windows utility.

    Now the situation is I can see the hard disk in disk management, safely remove USB drive and also in the WD utility software ( but it shows not writable). I cannot see in My Computer and neither read or write is disabled.

    I tried couple of things myself by going to disk management.

    I went to format and tried changing the file system to NTFS and also exFAT. but both time same result..... Please help me with that.


    External Hard disk suddenly stopped showing in explorer-partition.png
    External Hard disk suddenly stopped showing in explorer-remove_hardware.png
    External Hard disk suddenly stopped showing in explorer-wd-software.png
      My Computer
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  3. Bree
    Posts : 31,674
    10 Home x64 (22H2) (10 Pro on 2nd pc)
       New #2

    samuob said:
    External HDD shows in Device Manager as proper device name and I'm even able to "safely remove USB drive" using the windows utility...
    ...I cannot see in My Computer...
    Welcome to TenForums!

    To see the drive in File Explorer it needs to have a drive letter assigned to it. Your screenshot of disk management shows that it doesn't have one yet. In disk management, right-click on your 'Disk 1 New volume' and select 'Change Drive Letter and Paths...' to add one.
      My Computers
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  4. samuob
    Posts : 2
    windows 10
    Thread Starter
       New #3

    Thank you for the reply.. and i tried this and the problem is solved now... Thank you so much.
    Bree said:
    Welcome to TenForums!

    To see the drive in File Explorer it needs to have a drive letter assigned to it. Your screenshot of disk management shows that it doesn't have one yet. In disk management, right-click on your 'Disk 1 New volume' and select 'Change Drive Letter and Paths...' to add one.
      My Computer
    Quote Quote

  6. Bree
    Posts : 31,674
    10 Home x64 (22H2) (10 Pro on 2nd pc)
       New #4

    samuob said:
    ...i tried this and the problem is solved now... Thank you so much.
    Glad to have helped, @samuob
      My Computers
    Quote Quote

 

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