External Hard Drive issues...


trioditis's avatar
I have a 1 TB Toshiba external hard drive, that used to work fine, but now it won't let me access it. Its light goes blue, so I know it's being seen by my computer, and although I can get the computer under Devices and Printers to tell me that an External USB 3.0 is plugged in as a device, all information for it is unavailable and I can't get it to show up on the "Computer" window.

Please don't tell me it's broken, I know that. And of course the troubleshooter doesn't help (does it ever? I've never actually had that wretched program fix a goddamn thing on any computer I've ever had). What can I do to fix the situation?

Thanks.
Comments4
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electricjonny's avatar
What operating system are you using?  If Windows 7, try right clicking on Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management.  From there it should list all of the discs, even those that may not be formatted correctly.  If you can see it there, then you may need to format the disc, which would destroy any data you had there.

You should also try looking to see if you can see the drive from the BIOS or another computer or even a live Linux distribution.  If you can't, the disc may be corrupt or damaged.
Juliabohemian's avatar
Update your device detection driver
pyrohmstr's avatar
Plug it into a different USB port?