How to Fix External Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Windows 11

The problem arises when the connected external hard drive doesn’t appear on your Windows 11 PC. If you frequently face the same, here are the best ways to fix the problem. You can’t access your hard drive files when it fails to connect to your computer in the first place? Instead of using another computer or finding inconvenient methods to access your files, use the steps below to troubleshoot the external hard drive not showing up in Windows 11.

[sohelreza]

My external hard drive works well when I use it in USB 2 but don't work in USB 3. My computer has only USB 3. I bought a USB hub with both USB 2 & 3 and use the external hard drive in USB 2 of that hub. It works fine.

[waifu.]

i tried everything and it still doesn´t show up 😔😔

[lucpaquette]

Thanks! Disk management AND assigning a letter did work.

[fenfo]

got mine fixed using the cmd method, thanks a lot for this video!

[ninjastormling]

Seems mine somehow unformatted itself so reformatting it fixed it, Thanks!

[jasonflores]

my drive isn't showing up in the this PC section. I tried to clean it and that worked but making partition it fails in the command prompt. and in the create and format hard disk partitions it says unknown not initialized when I try to initialize it says Request Failed Due to a Fatal Device Hardware Error

[OFADK]

It worked after I made a complete SLOW format/partition on the external hard drive.('quick' one did not work, previously it had been used for mac)

[mine]

If its not showing online on the disk management and it has an red x on it and it has initalize device. What does that mean?