Social Media

Repair an external hard drive: how it works

If you want perfect hdd repair, it is mostly because it is no longer found or because there are access errors. Here are the solutions to the most common problems.

Is it possible to repair an external hard drive yourself? And why is that necessary at all? External hard drives have other problems than fixed drives. This is partly because they are often transported and can be damaged. On the other hand, they have to log on again and again to computers and get each time new drive letters. And so it happens, for example, those read-write errors occur because the hard disk’s surface has been damaged. In other cases, you can turn off the board as often as you like or change the cable the external hard disk is no longer recognized.

The external hard disk is not found

hdd repair

External hard drives are USB drives, just like any normal USB stick. This means, among other things, that they are re-registered each time they are plugged into the computer and assigned a drive letter. If it is always the same computer, internal connection data is stored internally, and the drive letter does not change. You can even assign a fixed drive letter to the external hard drive.

Repair external hard drive and log in again.

In Computer Management, you can control the status of all drives. If the external hard drive does not seem to be found, it’s usually just a login error. It appears in Disk Management but is not recognized correctly.

There are two ways to fix this external hard drive error:

  • You register it as an active partition so that it will be recognized by the system.
  • You assign her a drive letter to access the disk.

And this is how you proceed:

  • In the Windows search bar at the start button, enter the keyword Computer Management and click on it when the entry is displayed.
  • On the left side of the computer management, you find under the menu item Datastore the entry Disk Management. Select him with a mouse click.
  • Now all connected and recognized drives are displayed on the right even those that are recognized by the PC itself, but cannot be registered.
  • Searches (e.g., by drive size) for the external hard disk that is causing problems.
  • Right-click on the drive. This opens a context menu, as shown in the picture above.
  • If the drive is not found and the option “Mark partition as active” is available in the menu, click on it. It will then be marked as an active disk by Windows, recognized and given a drive letter under which you can now address the disk.
  • If the drive is detected as active but not logged in, then click “Change drive letters and paths” in the menu.
  • In the following dialog, enter a drive letter, and now you should find the disk.

If that did not work, then try to partition the external hard drive.

Repair hard drive with surface damage

The situation is quite different when a hard disk makes problems when accessing it and when it comes to read or write errors again and again. You can not fix such an external hard drive. But you can make sure that there are no more data losses. All operating systems include a hard disk drive that can detect surface damage. In that case, you can mark the damaged sectors and make sure that they will not be used in the future.

 

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website.