How To Fix External Hard Disk Not Detecting In Windows (No Drive Letter)

hi guys this is Jude from easy Tech's recently I got a lot of questions about external hard disks not showing up in the computer folder or not mounting automatically after migrating from mechanical hard disks - SSD or just after cloning from one disk to another this in a way is an extension of the video I made some time ago on how to clone a hard drive or SSD in Windows for free that video comes in handy if you are migrating from mechanical hard drive to SSD or if you want to switch from smaller to larger SSD they should definitely follow the procedures I showed in that video I will leave the link down in the description now that's it let's get back to the issue at hand so what happens is when I correct my external disk to the laptop first I get a usual device connection sound but then when I go back to my computer folder nothing shows up I wait for some time refresh but nothing now when I open the disk pad command by simply going to search type in this part in full click on this part for research results it is on the user account control and then you should have the disk pad prompt as you can see here of course you can also go through the normal command prompt and just type diskpart to get to the same terminal while he typed the command list disk and hit enter I should have a list of the disks currently attached to your computer and here you can see I have a second disk which is external hard disk I just attached however this disk has not been mounted so I cannot access it from my computer folder I cannot read through it I cannot write to it there are three possible ways to resolve this issue one is quick about kind of temporal while the other two require a bit more but a permanent I'll be covering all three in this tutorial in the order of complexity the quick about temporal fix is to manually mount the external disk by assigning a drive later to it however after you a mount or disconnect this disk amount another disk then you will need to mount it again when next you attach it to the same computer this might be an option if you don't use external disk too often or if you quickly want to says your disc without having to run all the commands in the second or third method they just go for it however if you want a permanent fix then carefully follow the second procedure and maybe the third procedure as well and you have that without much hassle so starting with the quick fix simply go to your window search and type create and format hard disk partitions click on the corresponding result from the search a window like this should pop up yeah as you can see I have two disks this 0 and this quark disk 0 with Drive letter C is of course my main hard drive while disc 1 which is the external hard drive I just attached has no Drive later that is what needs to be fixed from here I will simply right-click on this space right here and select change Drive later and parts a click on add and then it will suggest a drive letter for your external disk you can change this later if you want as long as the letter you are chosen hasn't been assigned to any other disk I will just go to the suggestion and hit OK I should immediately see your external disk open up or appear in your computer folder pretty simple but again like I mentioned earlier this is a quick and temporal fix so when you detach and reattach this external disk after mountain another disk then you will need to repeat this process again now for a permanent solution you need to have Windows mount your disk automatically once connected for that you need to first ensure the virtual disk service is up and running to do that simply press the keyboard combination control shift escape and you should have your task manager pop up you can also search task manager from Windows search and click on the corresponding result to bring up a window like this you click on the services tab then close to the bottom of the window click on open services on the services window search for virtual disk you can simply click on this blank space and then hit the V key to take you to services starting with letter V and here we have the virtual disk service right at the top now you want to ensure the status of these services running under the startup type says manual if you have anything different from this then double click on it and here use the drop down to select manual on the startup type and if yours is not already running then it's that to get it started next you want to make sure that automatic mountain of volumes is enabled on your computer for that you need to run the disk pad command once again so go to your search and type diskpart right click on this pad from the search results and select run as administrator on the disk pad prompt type the command after mount and hit enter yes you can see it says automatic mountain of new volumes disabled to turn that on simply type the command auto mount enable and hit enter she say automatic mountain of new volumes enabled now type exit and hit enter to close in this part restart your computer and try connecting your external list to see if it now shows up on the computer folder however if you notice that this problem persists with a particular external disk then it's likely that that disk or certain partitions of the disk have some attributes that prevent the disk from showing up in the computer folder or getting automatic Drive later assigned to it by Windows to resolve that we need to identify and clay such attributes to do that go back to the disk part with admin privilege on the disk pad prompt type the command list disk and hit enter you should have your disks listed here my attached disk is this one so I'll type select disk one and hit enter with this one selected type the command least part and hit enter but I should list all the partitions you currently have on the external disk here I have only one partition which is partition 1 so I'll type select partition 1 and hit enter next type attributes volume and hit enter this should show the current attributes of the selected partition here as you can see this partition is set to hidden and also no default Drive later can be assigned to it to clear those two attributes and to revert back to default settings type the command attributes volume Clare no default Drive later as shown on the screen and hit enter she say volume a tree was cleared successfully then next type attributes volume play hidden shown on the screen and hit enter now I should have your S&L disk open up immediately then you can just go back to the terminal and type exit to complete the process and that is it for this tutorial I will leave a link to the written instructions for this solutions down in the description to get all the commands I used for the second and third suggestions give this video a thumbs up if you found it useful I'll share with anyone you think might want to see drop us a comment if you have any questions or feedback don't forget to subscribe and channel notification for updates for future tech support videos like this one thanks for watching and see you in the next one you

Channel: EasyTechs

Views: 1,451,139

Keywords: External hard drive, Hard Drive Not Showing Up In My Computer, hard drive not detected, hard drive not showing up in my computer, Disk not initialized, hard drive failure, Hard drive not showing, External Hard Disk Not Detecting In Windows, hard disk, usb flash drive (media format), hard disk problem, external hard drive not recognized, external hard drive not detected, initialize disk, usb not showing, external hard disk not working, fixing hard drive

Id: SK3nF9PJU0o

Length: 7min 37sec (457 seconds)

Published: Mon May 20 2019