Oct 16, 2020 • Filed to: Answer Hard Drive Problems • Proven solutions
I got a WD external hard drive and connect it to my computer, but I found that the WD hard drive not recognized on the computer. Why is my external hard drive not showing up? How does fix my WD external hard drive not working problems and recover my all data back?
The WD external hard drive not showing up on the computer, it means you cannot access the drive to manage your data on the device. The solution to recovering our data from WD hard drive, you should fix the WD hard disk recognized and detected on the computer. On this page, we will offer the quick fixes to help you solve WD hard drive not recognized in Windows computer and then recover data from Western Digital hard drive with Recoverit Data Recovery software.
Content
Part 1: How to Recover Lost Data from Western Digital Hard Drive
DFL-WD II HDD Repair Tool is a program that provides HDD repair and data recovery capabilities. Western Digital Dashboard. Software for Mac Acronis True Image for Western Digital. GoodSync for WD. Install WD Discovery for Mac. WD Drive Utilities for Mac. WD Security for Mac. Product Firmware Product. If your product is not listed above, please visit the product page. My Net View Network Evaluation Tool. WD My Cloud GPL Source Code - 03.xx.xx. WD My Cloud GPL Source Code - Supports 04.xx.xx. WD Sync for Windows. Disk Drill – Best Overall Hard Drive Repair Software. Choosing the best overall hard drive repair. Western Digital is an American computer hard disk drive manufacturer and data storage company based in San Jose, CA. There are six series of the My Passport drives, three for PC and three for Mac. They include the Essential Edition, Essential SE Edition, Elite Edition, Essential for Mac, Studio Edition and the Essential SE for Mac.
Accidentally deleted and lost files from WD hard drive, or the hard disk damaged errors caused the data loss. Recoverit Data Recovery software can help you retrieve all lost data back. Download and install Recoverit External Hard Drive Recovery software on your computer, and connect the drive to the PC. Follow the next 3 steps to get your lost data back:
Step 1. With Recoverit Data Recovery, select WD hard disk to get started.
Step 2. The hard drive data recovery will start scanning the device, it will take minutes to completed scan.
Step 3. At last, you can check all the recovered files. Then, select your files and click 'Recover' button to save all recovered files on a safe device.
Part 2: How to Solve My WD Hard Drive Not Recognized in Windows
Follow the next quick fixes to help you solve WD external hard drive not recognized in Windows and make your hard disk working on the computer.
1. Check WD Hard Drive with Disk Management
You can try checking the Disk management utility to see if the hard drive is showing up there or not. With Disk Management you can initialize WD hard drive or assign a drive letter to WD hard drive partition.
Step 1. Press Windows + R to start the Run command.
Step 2. Type diskmgmt.msc and press enter to start the Disk management.
Step 3. Locate the WD hard drive and right-click on it, select 'Initialize Disk' and choose the partition system between MBR and GPT.
Step 4. Then, right-click on the disk and select Create New Simple Volume.
Step 5. Also, right-click on your WD external hard drive and select Change Drive letter and path.
Step 6. Then, assign a new drive letter to your WD external hard and click OK to save the changes.
2. Turn on USB Root Hub to make WD external hard drive recognizable
To troubleshoot the problem of WD hard drive not working on Windows computer, you can turn on USB Root Hub to make it recognizable.
Step 1. Select Start, type devmgmt.msc and press Enter.
Step 2. Open the Device Manager and expand the USB controllers.
Step 3. Now, right-click on the USB Root Hub, select Properties, and then head to Power Management.
Step 4. Uncheck the box saying 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save the power'.
Use this process repeatedly to turn on all the USB Root hubs displayed on the list. After that, restart your computer and the WD external hard drive should appear on your PC.
3. Update WD hard disk device driver
You can try to update drivers using Windows Update to fix WD external hard disk not working on Windows computer.
Step 1. Go to the Settings.
Step 2. Click on Update & Security and then click Windows Update.
Step 3. Then, click the Check for updates button.
After these steps, try to connect your WD external hard disk to the computer and check what if the disk can recognize on the Windows computer.
As above we offer the quick fixes to solve the WD my passport not showing up the problem on Windows, if all fails to solve the error, the hard drive may get a physical failure, you should take it to the hard drive repair store or you need to replace a new one.
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Part 3: Tips to Protect Your Western Digital External Hard Drive
While using an external hard drive, users may go through issues like hard disk not recognized. A variety of reasons can result in a Western Digital external hard drive not recognized. Some of the common troubleshooting are discussed below.
1. Do not add new data
Do not add any new files to the WD hard disk after data loss from the Western Digital external hard drive. This can overwrite the files that can be recovered from the WD hard disk and make all the data lost permanently. Hence, before you find out and recover all the lost data on your Western Digital hard disk, stop adding new content on it. This will improve your chances of WD data recovery.
2. Use anti-virus software
Regularly scan your WD hard drive with authorized antivirus software to help remove possible viruses from your WD external hard drive. By scanning and removing viruses from your computer hard drive regularly, your computer will be healthy and free from any file corruption that could lead to data loss.
3. Eject WD hard drive by using 'safe remove' option
Never unplug or disconnect your WD hard drive abruptly as sudden removal may not give it enough time to save the status and lead to a file system corruption. Always eject the WD external hard drive using the 'Safe Remove' option to prevent data loss from sudden ejection.
No doubt Western Digital produces the best quality hard drives, but even they are as susceptible to data losses as other hard drives on the market. You may get troubled when you lose your precious data due to any data loss reason. In this case, you can use the Recoverit Data Recovery tool to recover data from external hard drive easily.
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Summary :
Hard drives can run into problems sometimes. This article will show you how to make hard drive repair and recover data from a hard drive. When your hard drive needs to be repaired, you can try the top 4 solutions in this article to fix the hard drive.
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When your hard drive is corrupt or you encounter other hard drive errors, the data on the hard drive can be inaccessible and unreadable. How to make hard disk repair Windows 10? If you don't know any solutions, this article can be a big help.
The following contents will show you some ways to make HDD repair. Before you try the following solutions, you can try some simple fixes to repair the disk errors. For example, try to unplug the internal drive and connect it again to see if Windows can read your storage device. You can also try another USB port on your computer if your hard drive is external.
If simple fixes cannot help you, then you can follow the methods in this post to make hard disk repair Windows 10 by yourself.
Solution 1. Reinstall Your Hard Drive’s Driver
If your computer cannot read your external hard drive, you can connect it to another PC to see if the drive can be read and work normally. If it works, you can make external hard drive repair by reinstalling the device drivers on your computer. Here are detailed steps for you to reinstall your hard drive's drivers.
Step 1. Input Device Manager in the Windows 10 Cortana search box and click on the best match to open the device manager.
Step 2. Locate Disk drives and double click it.
Step 3. Then you will see all disks on your computer displayed here. Right-click the hard disk with hard drive failure and then click Uninstall device to uninstall the drive.
Step 4. Restart the computer and connect the hard drive. The drivers will start installing automatically in most cases.
After restarting, you can check if your external hard drive can be read. If this solution doesn't work, you can try the next method.
Solution 2. Check and Fix Hard Drive Errors with Disk Repair Tool
You can use a professional HDD repair tool to fix hard drive issues. There are many wonderful third-party hard disk repair software that you can use to diagnose and fix hard drive issues. Be sure to choose a reliable one.
Here I recommend you to choose the third-party disk utility - MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition. It is the professional hard drive repair software & an all-in-one partition manager, which can help you check and fix hard drive errors in just a few clicks.
The MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition can also help you manage computer hard drives in a flexible way with its features like extend partition, resize partition, format partition, migrate OS to SSD/HD, copy disk, convert MBR to GPT and so on.
So the free hard disk repair tool is worth trying. Now let's see the detailed steps.
Step 1. Download the disk utility MiniTool Partition Wizard Free Edition by clicking the following button. Install it on your computer and launch it to get the main interface.
Step 2. Then select the partition on a hard disk and choose Check File System on the left action panel.
Step 3. As you can see, here are two options for you to choose from. The option Check only will only scan your hard drive for errors but it will not fix detected file system errors automatically. The option Check and fix detected errors will scan the drive and fix any file system errors found. To make hard drive repair, please select Check & fix detected errors and click Start.
Step 4. After the hard drive repair is completed, you can close the program.
Solution 3. Repair Hard Disk Errors with CHKDSK Utility
If the above fixes cannot help you fix the errors, you can run the Windows CHKDSK utility with CMD (via admin mode) to perform hard drive repair on Windows 10. You can access the Windows 10 disk utility via command prompt. Here are detailed steps.
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Step 1. To access the Windows built-in hard drive repair tool, type cmd in the Windows 10 Cortana search box. Then right-click the best match then choose Run as administrator.
Step 2. In the Command Prompt window, type CHKDSK *: /f /r (* represents the drive letter of the specific drive that you want to repair) and then hit Enter. With this command, the hard drive is analyzed track-by-track to detect and fix recoverable data on the defective areas. It will give you all the details here.
The commonly used parameters /f and /r have different meanings:
Western Digital Check Disk Tool
- /f – fix any errors it detected.
- /r – Locate bad sectors on the drive and try to recover any and all readable information from them.
Step 3. After the error checking is completed, you can type exit to close the command prompt window.
This way should help you fix hard drive errors effectively. Video games and intelligence. If your hard drive is working properly, you can backup important files as soon as possible. Sometimes the dead drive just occurs without notice.
Solution 4. Format the Hard Drive
Another effective method to eliminate hard drive errors is to format the hard drive. As you know, a hard drive can become RAW due to virus attack, improper operations, bad sectors or power outage. In this case, you are unable to access the hard drive data. You can format the hard drive to fix the error.
However, if you just format the hard drive directly, all files will be deleted including important files in it. So the best way is to recover the data to another drive with a piece of professional hard drive recovery software firstly. Then format the drive with a professional drive formatting tool.
Recover Data Before Formatting the Drive
To make internal hard drive data recovery, my recommendation is to use reputable and reliable hard drive recovery software MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate.
It can help you recover all kinds of files including photos, audio, music, videos, emails archives, documents from various storage media like HDD, SSD, SD card, USB drive, digital camera, memory stick and so on.
Step 1. Get the hard drive recovery software MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate by clicking the following button. Install it on your computer and get it registered.
Step 2. After registration, you will get the main interface. Then launch Data Recovery on the top toolbar.
Step 3. Select the drive you want to recover data from and click Scan button on the lower right corner.
Here are three parts on the Data Recovery interface:
- Recovery Result:You will see the last scanning result record here and you can load recovery result by yourself to recover files directly.
- Logical Drive:All existing partitions on your computers will be listed here. If a partition does not have drive letters, it will be arranged at the end of the list.
- Hard Disk:All disks on your computer will be listed here, including external hard drive, SSD, USB drive, etc. You can also select a disk to scan directly.
Besides, if there are lost partitions or unallocated spaces on your hard drive, there will be Lost Partition or Unallocated Space parts.
Step 4. The data recovery software is scanning your drive now. You can click Pause or Stop button near the progress bar to pause or stop the scanning process if you find what you want. You can wait for the scanning to complete.
Step 5. Check needed files in the recovery result. You can preview a picture or .txt file which is smaller than 20MB. At last, click Save to save the recovered files.
Step 7. Choose a directory to save the needed files. It is recommended to save the recovered files on another drive. Otherwise, the lost/deleted data could be overwritten. Make sure you save files to a safe place.
During the repair process, if the hard drive you’re trying to fix contains important files, then you can also use the above data recovery tool to extract the documents, photos, music, videos, emails and other files from the hard drive easily.
Format Hard Drive
Now, you can format a hard drive that’s not working properly to fix the disk failure. Here are detailed steps to tell you how to format hard drive Windows 10 with the free disk utility.
Step 1. Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate and get the main interface.
Step 2. Select the drive and choose Format Partition from the left action panel.
Step 3. Then specify the partition label, file system as well as cluster size on this page. Then click OK to continue.
Step 4. Click Apply on the upper right corner to allow the pending operations.
After formatting, you can use your hard drive as normal.
Conclusion
Hard drive can become damaged or corrupted due to various hard drive errors like bad sectors on hard drive, file system corruptions. So you must learn these basic tips. After reading this article, you may find that hard drive repair is not so complicated.
If you have any question about how to make hard drive repair Windows 10 when there are hard drive errors, you can leave a message in the following comment zone and we will reply as soon as possible. If you have better solution, don't hesitate to share it with us. If you need any help when using MiniTool software, you may contact us via [email protected].
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