Fixing Seagate External Hard Drive Not Showing up Issue on Windows 10
28 July 2023Ashley S. Miller Specialist of Customer Service Dept.
Summary Learn how to resolve Windows 10 recognition issues with Seagate mobile hard drives and explore effective solutions for data loss recovery in this article.
I. What is a Seagate mobile hard drive, and what are the reasons for it not being recognized?
Seagate (Seagate) mobile hard disk is a very popular portable mobile storage device. Among all hard disk brands, its performance is extremely superior. However, as a kind of perishable equipment, the mobile hard disk will also have various failures or other problems during use. In most cases, you can directly access the hard disk through a Windows computer, but when your device cannot recognize the Seagate (Seagate) mobile hard disk, it may be due to the following common reasons:
● The device driver is out of date or damaged. (please check:update driver A step of)
● The USB port is damaged. It is recommended to replace the USB port or reconnect the USB data cable.
● The hard disk has not been initialized.
● The hard disk does not have a drive letter.
● Incompatible file systems. The Windows system supports FAT32/ NTFS/ exFAT and other file systems. If the file system of the Seagate (Seagate) mobile hard disk is exclusive to the Mac system, it may not be compatible with the Windows system. If you want to be compatible with both Windows and Mac systems, you can consider formatting it as exFAT.
No matter what the reason is that the Seagate (Seagate) mobile hard disk cannot be recognized, when encountering such a failure, it means that the files inside cannot be read normally, and there may be a risk of data loss. If only the Seagate mobile hard disk cannot be displayed in the file explorer, but the mobile hard disk can be seen in the disk management, it is recommended that you use professional data recovery software to restore and save the data in the hard disk to another computer before repairing the mobile hard disk failure. Location. Here we recommend you to use Renee Undeleter , let’s learn more about this software and how to use it.
II. How to solve the problem when Windows 10 cannot recognize the Seagate mobile hard disk?
1. Recover lost data with Renee Undeleter
What is Renee Undeleter?
Renee Undeleter It is a software specially used to restore various data files. When you accidentally delete important files, empty the recycle bin, or format the disk/storage, you can use this tool to retrieve the lost data. The software covers four functional modules, including file recovery, format recovery, partition recovery and image creation. Therefore, it can help you solve all possible data loss problems that may occur during system use in an all-round way, which is very convenient.
Hot Topic - ADsRenee Undeleter – Simple & Powerful Software for Data Recovery
Easy to use Recover data by 3 steps;
Multiple scan modes Fast partition scan, whole partition scan and whole disk scan;
Supported file types Image, video, audio, text, email and so on;
Image creation Create a partition image to read and back up data;
Supported devices SD card, SDHC, SDXC, USB flash drive, hard disk and computer.
Easy to use Recover data by 3 steps;
Multiple scan modes Fast partition/whole partition/whole disk scan;
As a professional data recovery software, Renee Undeleter not only has comprehensive functions, but also is very simple to operate. The specific operation steps are as follows:
Step 1: Download, install and run Renee Undeleter, select the (Partition Recovery) option on the main interface.
Note: Do not install on the disk that needs to restore data, so as not to cause data overwriting.
Data recovery function introduction:
File Recovery – Quickly retrieve files lost due to accidental deletion or emptying the recycle bin.
Formatted Recovery – Quickly recover files lost due to inaccessible or formatted partitions.
Partition Recovery – Analyze and get partition information and perform a full scan of the entire partition.
Create Mirror – You can create a mirror image for a partition to back up the current partition state.
Step 2: Next, select the Seagate mobile hard disk device to be scanned, and click (Next). Select (default setting) on the advanced setting interface.
Step 3: After that, the software will analyze the Seagate mobile hard disk device. After the analysis, a prompt window of “Select the partition you need to scan” may pop up. You can select the corresponding partition according to your needs. If you don’t select it, all partitions will be scanned. , it will take longer.
After scanning, you can preview the files in the preview window on the right, then select the files you need to restore, and click the (Recover) button in the lower right corner to restore the selected files.
Step 4: Next, select the target folder, click (Browse) to select the path to store the file, and then click the (Restore) button to start executing the file recovery command, you only need to wait patiently.
Note : Please do not save the recovered files on the original disk to avoid data overwriting. It is recommended to choose another disk to save these recovered files.
2. Change or assign drive letter
If the Seagate mobile hard disk does not have a drive letter, the system may not recognize the hard disk. The solution is to reassign a drive letter to the unrecognized Seagate hard disk. The specific steps are as follows:
Step 1: Run the Windows 10 computer, type “computer management” in the “search box” in the lower left corner, and then click to enter the computer management interface.
Step 2: Next, click (Disk Management) on the left window, if you see a partition/volume without a drive letter, please check if it is a Seagate hard drive.
Step 3: After confirming the completion, right click on it and select (Change Drive Letter and Paths) option.
Step 4: Click (Add) to add a drive letter to the mobile hard disk.
Step 5: Next, check (Assign the following drive letter) and select a letter, click (OK) to complete the change or assign a drive letter.
3. Initialize the external hard drive
If you have not initialized your drive, it will not show up in Windows File Explorer. In this case, please right-click the hard disk drive in the disk management interface, select “Initialize Disk”, and then follow the prompts to initialize the disk, and then you can try to use the Seagate mobile hard disk again. Also, be warned that this operation will erase all data on the Seagate external hard drive.
Specific steps are as follows:
Step 1: Connect the Seagate hard drive to the computer, then press the (Windows+X) keys on the keyboard simultaneously. Then in the pop-up list, select the (Disk Management) option.
Step 2: Find the (Disk Management) option on the “Computer Management” interface. Right-click the Seagate mobile hard disk that needs to be initialized, and select the (Initialize Disk) option.
Step 3: Select the partition style MBR or GPT and click (OK). If your Seagate mobile hard drive is 2TB or larger, please choose GPT. If MBR is less than 2TB, you can choose MBR. please check:Features and differences between MBR and GPT .
Step 4: After initializing the Seagate mobile hard disk, the status of the device will change from “not initialized” to “online”. Right-click on the unallocated space, select (New Simple Volume), and proceed to the next step.
Step 5: In the New Simple Volume Wizard, set the partition size and click (Next).
Step 6: Next, select the drive letter for the mobile hard disk partition, and then click (Next).
Step 7: Select the file system as NTFS, select the default value in “Allocation Unit Size”, and set the partition name in “Volume Label”. Then select the (Perform a quick format) option and click (Next). Finally, click (Finish) and that’s it.
Note: If the file system of the mobile hard disk is NTFS, then when the mobile hard disk is connected to a Mac computer, it can only read but not write, and you need to install paid third-party software to write/modify data. If you need to be compatible with Windows/Mac systems at the same time, then the file system can choose exFAT. Please check the characteristics and differences of each file system.
