External Drive Not Showing Up Files: How to Fix it in Windows?

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(Last Updated On: March 5, 2019)

Have you faced an issue where the external drive not showing up? If yes, here’s something of your interest. Learn simple ways to fix an external hard drive not showing up and get easy solution for data recovery.

External Drive not showing up:

Although, external hard drive makes our life and work more convenient and comfortable. But, there are chances when you plug in an external drive into your windows it does not show up. Here, you will be able, to take a look at ways to resolve this issue of external hard drive not showing up. You can make it accessible for use on Windows running systems.

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Normally, by opening Windows File Explorer -> clicking Viewing tab -> under where ticking the option of “Hidden items”, the files and folders you can’t  see just now will appear again on the external drive. Unfortunately, there are still some people saying that by showing hidden items doesn’t help them restore the lost files.

External Hard Drive: How to Fix it?

Many factors would cause your hard drive contents to disappear without your notice. These may include ransomware virus hides, deletes or encrypts files and hardware issues. In addition to it, there might be file system errors, and a hard drive can get corrupted, etc.

Therefore, it’s crucial to salvage your important data. To do so,you need to download a data recovery software. Here, we have taken the example of MiniTool power data recovery. Let the software restore files that you can’t see on an external hard drive in Windows within minutes.

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MiniTool power data recovery recovers deleted, formatted or lost data. This can be done even if you’ve emptied the Recycling Bin or deleted them directly (provided they haven’t been securely deleted with multiple passes).  It can recover data from  hard drive, USB drives, memory cards, and other storage devices.

Fix External Hard Drive not Showing Up: Steps to Follow

Step 1: Please connect the external hard drive to computer.  And then run MiniTool Power Data Recovery Free version, Choose “Hard Disk Drive”.

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Step 2: Choose the external hard drive to have a full scan.

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Step 3: After full scan is over, see the scan results for the desired data. You can preview the file. Click Save and choose another safe location to save the recovered data.

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When you can confirm that all data you need are recovered successfully to another device, you may try to fix the current external drive.

Try to use command problem to fix the hard drive problems to prevent further data loss.

1) Type cmd in the Windows search box, right click on Command Prompt and choose Run as administrator.

2) On the command window, type chkdsk f: /h (f is the drive letter of your external hard drive, so please replace the drive letter with the corresponding drive letter of yours).

3) Press Enter and chkdsk will start checking your corrupted HDD and then fix the corruption on the drive.

I have noticed “files not showing in external hard drive” is a frequently asked question in Google search. Therefore, hope this is able to help you.

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Now, if something happens that leads to damage disk, we should stop all operations and turn to reliable solutions quickly. This shall ensure the largest possibility for data recovery. What do you think about it? What is the best and fastest solution when external drive not showing up? Feel free to share your feedback.

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