External USB HDD not being detected

Joan M

Hi all, My brother inlaw called me today asking for help. He has a desktop and a laptop. When he plugs the external HDD to the laptop everything works as expected. When he plugs the external HDD to the desktop nothing happens. I've remotely connected to his desktop, went to device manager and nothing appears there. Nothing in the partitions manager, installed AOMEI partition assistant and nothing. Tomorrow I'll go his place and will try to connect all USB devices into a USB hub (just in case the power supply is not enough to power it). This started happening after replacing the original mechanical HDD for a SSD, and keeping the original one too (to have more space). Any idea of what could be going on? Thank you all in aadvance! :thumbsup:

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RedDk

This might be helpful to have in the toolbox: USBDeview[^] Chances are that some flavor of USB is preventing the plugged-in HDD to advance the cause of vast local storage. My box has three, black, blue, and (pink) red; none of which I have ever really cared to figure out what the reason each rejected/accepted the various things I've plugged in. Whatever worked worked. Or it didn't. Good luck!

Ron Anders

Run adwcleaner and / or malwarebytes on that desktop. I have seen countless malware infected machined where usb storage no longer works. I makes no difference if they have this or that antivirus, do it anyway.

RickZeeland

I once had a strange situation similar to that, a PC from a friend had startup problems. Disconnecting the bunch of USB devices that were attached to the PC, and several restarts of Windows helped.

Jorgen Andersson

Check if the usb delivers enough power to the HDD.

Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello

Richard Andrew x64

Keep in mind that there is an Explorer setting to hide empty drives. If the external drive is empty, it might not show up.

The difficult we do right away... ...the impossible takes slightly longer.

ElectronProgrammer

You do not give enough information to diagnose quickly so let's go in slow mode :zzz: I assume that both computers are using the same OS (either windows or linux). If not, the instructions below may not apply. Also, the instructions are ordered from the quickest to do to the hardest. * Try different USB ports on the desktop. Use ports directly from the motherboard. Some case ports have bad cables that affect the speed and power delivery. Preferably use USB 2 ports instead of USB 3 ports. Even today, some drivers have issues with some USB 3 hardware. My current board has this problem in Linux. * Use a Y USB cable to connect the external drive to two USB ports (if you have one). It might be under powered. * Double check that the external box specifications are sufficient for the disk you put inside. It may be working on the laptop (due to different drivers than the desktop) but might be corrupting the disk. I had this problem once were a box appeared to work but was clipping anything above 1TB corrupting the HDD (which, to make maters worse, was a backup drive :doh: ). * If you made an exact copy of the disk on to the SSD and they are both on the desktop, they have the same ID which is unacceptable by the OS so only the first disk to be connected is made available. In this case you have to change the disk ID. The following links from a quick internet search might help (even if they do not present the most appropriate solution) Linux: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/what-is-disk-identifier-740408/[^] How do I change the disk ID in Linux?[^] Windows: How to change Hard Disk's Volume Serial Number (Volume ID) - wintips.org - Windows Tips & How-tos[^] Good luck.

Joan M