Where a disk disappears from File Explorer, Disk Management, or Finder, the reason lies somewhere along a spectrum, with either a simple thirty-second cable swap at one extreme or a totally dead drive at the other. The goal is to identify where you fall within this spectrum before attempting to do anything, as a wrong move on a failing drive may very well take what would have been an easily recovered file and lose it.
As soon as Windows says “format” or “initialise” your drive, decline. That box almost always indicates a corrupted file table, not lost data, and clicking through that box is what really deletes the data.
From least serious to most severe. Most lost disks never get beyond items 1 and 2 on this list.
Fraying of leads; bad USB ports; a disk caddy which can no longer deliver enough current to power your disk: any of these will bury a perfectly healthy drive. These are common bus-powered external problems.
The computer sees the disk but never assigns a letter to it (Windows); nor does it mount the disk’s volume (Mac). Thus, when you try to access the disk, there is nothing visible, despite all working parts being intact.
The disk appears but the indexing has become corrupted and thus the computer labels the disk as “RAW” and/or prompts you to perform a format. Usually, the files are still present and untouched.
Stuck heads; a bad control board; bad firmware which cannot be loaded. This is the one item where simply leaving it plugged in will cost you some of your data.
In most cases, if your drive is running silently with no clicks or grinds, they will be safe. If your drive is producing any type of noise, move to the final part of this article and do not use the drive until further notice.
Try changing one item at a time; try using a fresh cable, a different port on the same computer, a different computer altogether. An alternative method would be to borrow a new power brick or enclosure for an external hard drive.
Check Disk Management in Windows, or Disk Utility on a Mac. The hardware may be functioning properly and there may be a software issue if your disk shows up in either program at all, letter or no letter.
If this does appear as a bare name, assign it a letter (Windows) or click “Mount” (Mac). If it will not mount then do not proceed. The file system is damaged and mounting it repeatedly will make no difference.
The moment you start hearing the “clicking”, the grinding or the “dropouts”, pull the power cord. You’ll never bring a mechanical problem back with trying again and each time you try you will lose data which you can’t get back.
Each one of these actions decreases the chances of recovery for a recoverable drive. If in doubt, doing nothing is always the safest option.
For reasons of its own, a Mac may hide a drive from your view; therefore, spend two minutes here before you worry about it. To begin start in Finder, go to Settings → Sidebar and General, as external drives are often turned off from view. Open Disk Utility and choose “View → Show All Devices.” A drive that is visible but greyed out can be selected and you may attempt to mount the volume. A volume that cannot mount usually has damaged APFS or HFS+ structures covering intact files. These types of volumes can be recovered and are not considered “dead.” Be aware of two Mac-specific issues: Windows-formatted NTFS drives will always mount read-only, thus they look broken even though they’re fine, and if an external desktop class device is plugged into an unpowered hub, the hub can’t provide enough power to run the external desktop class device. Plug it directly into your computer. When Disk Utility and System Report both come back empty and blank, you’ve got a hardware failure, or a dead USB bridge inside your caddy. The drive needs to be on a workbench and not another port.
Quick answers to what goes into an inbox most often.
Rarely. A “You need to format this disk” message usually means that there is something wrong with the file system on the disk rather than something has been deleted from the disk. The files are still there. Formatting is what will delete them, therefore don’t let the computer format it and let the disk be read as is.
Usually, either a bad file system or a hard drive that is quietly dying inside its case. If it’s also slow, clicking or dropping out, stop using it; we read the hard drive directly at hardware level, so whether or not Windows or macOS will open it doesn’t matter.
Only on a drive which you have already confirmed as being good. CHKDSK writes directly to the physical disk, therefore on a disk that is failing physically CHKDSK can cut down what’s remaining to recover. If your disk has begun to click, slow, or drop out, do not run CHKDSK.
Yes, it is standard procedure. With our professional-grade imaging equipment we are able to access the physical disk of the drive from a low-level perspective, thus allowing us to recover the data if Windows cannot locate or mount the disk.
If your drive is undetectable by Windows, RAW, or simply asking to be reformatted, do not format it. Get a quote from us and bring it in for a free diagnostic, and we’ll get whatever data is present off of it.