Portable HDD intermittently not recognised by W10

I am having a lot of trouble with a Toshiba 2TB portable HDD on Windows 10. Sometimes it is recognised by Explorer, sometimes it isn't, and I can't discern a pattern. The drive works in every other device I have, and when it doesn't work, it is not seen using any of the USB ports. It is not a case of a duplicate drive letter; when it fails to be seen, it isn't seen in Device Manager or Disk Management either. There is always power to the drive, as even when it fails to be seen, it lights up blue for USB3.

One pattern I do notice is that, when the drive fails to be seen in Windows 10, the subsequent restart or shutdown can take up to 10 minutes. Even after that, there is no guarantee that the drive will be seen.

I guess this suggests a driver failure of some kind, but I thought I would ask.

Thanks!

Sounds like ypur USB drivers are havintg a moment.

Uninstall all the USB Controllers and the root hubs should disappear.

Be aware that your USB mouse and keyboard at some point will stop working due to no USB drivers so might be worth setting your power button to shut the machine down :)

This is probably a dumb question but, Did you install an OS (Linux, windows,etc) on this disk?
I had the same trouble with my external toshiba. Mine turned out to be ubuntu version I tried then cleared.
I copied everything off it. deleted all partitions and redid them. It had been for the most part XFat and mbr.
When I redid it I formated the partitions as gpt. I haven't had trouble since. If you have to go this route,
Check out the tutorial section here, plenty of step by step instructions.

kingtez1984 said:

Sounds like ypur USB drivers are havintg a moment.

Uninstall all the USB Controllers and the root hubs should disappear.

Be aware that your USB mouse and keyboard at some point will stop working due to no USB drivers so might be worth setting your power button to shut the machine down :)

I actually tried this at a time when the drive could be seen (I unplugged it, of course) and when I uninstalled the controllers and restarted the computer, the drive was then not seen.

One other thing to note is that, when the Toshiba drive is not seen (but lights up as USB3 connected), if I physically remove the drive and plug anything else into it, like my wireless keyboard dongle, the port won't recognise it, either. The only time I have this problem is after the Toshiba drive has been plugged in.

It probably still boils down to drivers but I am wondering if the Toshiba drive and the USB3 port are messing with each other?

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thomaseg1 said:

This is probably a dumb question but, Did you install an OS (Linux, windows,etc) on this disk?
I had the same trouble with my external toshiba. Mine turned out to be ubuntu version I tried then cleared.
I copied everything off it. deleted all partitions and redid them. It had been for the most part XFat and mbr.
When I redid it I formated the partitions as gpt. I haven't had trouble since. If you have to go this route,
Check out the tutorial section here, plenty of step by step instructions.

No, no OS has ever been installed on it.

kingtez1984's suggestion is a good one. you might also if it comes up check the little box asking if you want to unistall the drivers too.try moving the mouse and keyboard dongle(s) to different ports away from the drive port if you can.