External Not being Detected | Linus Tech Tips | Page 1

wicked crystal Dec 30, 2022, 4:17 AM

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Im trying to see whats on an old Segate external drive but its not being recognized by windows, when i open disk its trying to get me to initialize it (doesnt have a volume label) any suggestions on how i can get the files or view them?

wicked crystal Dec 31, 2022, 3:40 AM

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;-;

solemn viper Dec 31, 2022, 3:42 AM

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do you have a screenshot?

wraith sparrow Dec 31, 2022, 3:47 AM

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Is it a 2.5" drive?

wicked crystal Dec 31, 2022, 3:52 AM

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yes

keen lion Dec 31, 2022, 3:52 AM

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The default answer is that Windows is seeing a different format on the drive than what windows can handle.
Example 1 - on older windowsOS, it used to be a thing where win 8 or prior may not have been able to see a drive formatted in GPT. Since moderen times, Windows has always been built on using NTFS or Fat or exFat

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Example 2 - you have a hard drive you used with an Apple device and windows can’t see it because it’s not able to be read by windows

wicked crystal Dec 31, 2022, 3:53 AM

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This was always used with win 10

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never used with mac orf apple

keen lion Dec 31, 2022, 3:54 AM

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I get that, those were just my examples to help give you the context on the “why”.

If you open up command prompt or PowerShell (as admin), type in “diskpart”

wraith sparrow Dec 31, 2022, 3:55 AM

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wicked crystal yes

It's no good then.

keen lion Dec 31, 2022, 3:56 AM

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When you type diskpart, you are calling a native disk manager partitioning tool (this is what the gui you see is based on)

wraith sparrow Dec 31, 2022, 3:56 AM

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Seagate 2.5" drives, especially the externals, are notoriously unreliable.

wicked crystal Dec 31, 2022, 3:56 AM

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keen lion I get that, those were just my examples to help give you the context on the “why...

now what

wraith sparrow Dec 31, 2022, 3:56 AM

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Most of them are of the Rosewood family, and those just grenade for no reason. In fact, the last few years of production on the XBOne and PS4 exclusively used Seagate Rosewood drives. I replaced one that had "DEAD" in the serial number.

keen lion Dec 31, 2022, 3:57 AM

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https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/diskpart

Here’s documentation to help if you like to dig on it

After you have it, type “list disk”

diskpart

Reference article for the diskpart command interpreter, which helps you manage your computer's drives.

wicked crystal Dec 31, 2022, 3:57 AM

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ok

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looks like nothing was on it anyways

keen lion Dec 31, 2022, 3:58 AM

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List disk will give you a full listing of all drives that are powered on and connected.

Now you have to match up the disk you’re talking about. when you see the specific device, it’ll have a name. “Disk 1”, disk 2, etc

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Well that’s what i was gonna get at

wicked crystal Dec 31, 2022, 3:58 AM

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size 3726 GB Free 3726

keen lion Dec 31, 2022, 3:58 AM

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So it’s possible it was never used and needs to be formatted first. Which would be one reason

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As you poke around in diskpart, there’s a way to have it tell you the system format of the physical drive.

If it is the case that the drive was never used, you will have no choice but to create a new volume on the drive in order to use it

wicked crystal Dec 31, 2022, 4:00 AM

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mucho appreciate

keen lion Dec 31, 2022, 4:00 AM

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If you have concrete proof that you used it and had data stored on it, there are a few tools you can dig with, to see what remnants are available for salvaging.

But if windows tells you it needs to be formatted with a drive letter, or needs to be initialized, it means it’s fully empty

wicked crystal Dec 31, 2022, 4:01 AM

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got it formatted, just wanted to make sure nothing important was on it

keen lion Dec 31, 2022, 4:02 AM

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Yeah that’s really the only way to be fully certain that it isn’t just a drive formatting issue. As noted, occasionally not having an MBR based disk used to be a larger issue for windows historically. But by win10, it was greatly overhauled to allow windows to see GPT drives, as well as see different volume formats (exFAT, NTFS, Apple FileVault, etc)

#External Not being Detected