can't access external hard drive

Hello,
A few days ago I purchased a brand new Lenovo Ideapad laptop (Win ver 1909), and when I tried to transfer my files via my external WD hard drive, I could see the drive as a partition (don't remember how I found that) and I could hear it running, but it didn't show up in Windows Explorer and I had to use my secondary flash drive backups to restore my files to my new computer. What is causing this, and how can I resolve the issue so I can access and back up files on my external hard drive?

Hi see if this helps you out How to: Solve External Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Windows 10

Hi again oscer :)
Yes, this is helpful. It was Disk Mgt, not Device Mgr where I saw the ext HDD, and yes it shows as unallocated. But how do I know whether to assign it as MBR or GPT? From the little I've just read online, I can't tell what's the right choice.

if you Initialize you will lose the data on the drive i believe might want to try rebuilding the MBR

I installed and ran AOEMI Partition Assistant, and rebuilt the MBR - nothing seemed to happen, and that section of the link you provided doesn't specifically state what SHOULD happen... The HDD is still not showing up in WinExp. It was working fine on my old Win 10 laptop just a few days ago when I did the last backup, so I know it's working OK.

can you try it on another computer to see if it works correctly on it?

3point1 said:

Hi again oscer :)
Yes, this is helpful. It was Disk Mgt, not Device Mgr where I saw the ext HDD, and yes it shows as unallocated. But how do I know whether to assign it as MBR or GPT? From the little I've just read online, I can't tell what's the right choice.

is t his external drive an ssd? if so i would do GPT if not just do it MBR. i would only do this if you do not mind losing the data on it.

What is the make /model and capacity of the external disk? How many partitions did it have?

Post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management. Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of

Steve C said:

Ensure automount is enabled Enable or Disable Automount of New Disks and Drives in Windows

Automount is enabled.

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jumanji said:

What is the make /model and capacity of the external disk? How many partitions did it have?

Post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management. Disk Management - How to Post a Screenshot of

The external HDD is a WD 750GB with one partition. Sorry I don't know which WD device it is, since it's in a case and I didn't make note of that info before I transferred it. It might be Blue or Scorpio. Requested screenshot attached.