• The computer does not recognize the removable hard drive. Can a hard drive be used as a flash drive?

    Almost every computer user has encountered a situation where they purchased an external drive and the computer does not see the external hard drive. Sometimes interaction with the media that has already worked with the PC stops. To solve this problem, there are many ways.

    This is a useful device that allows you to store and exchange data with computers. The volume of the device can vary, up to a maximum of several terabytes. The device allows you to safely store various information for a long time.

    Why doesn't my PC see my external hard drive?

    If the laptop does not see the external hard drive, you should use a certain algorithm of actions. First, in the Control Panel you should find "System Settings" And "Administration". This is where you can see the section "Control".

    It is important to pay attention to the left column. You need to go to disk management, there you will see the disks currently connected to the system. Often, the system does not see the external hard drive due to the incorrect assignment of its letter. To change the drive letter, you need to click on the external media icon and change the drive letter. Then a letter is assigned that is not yet in the system.

    If a new disk is not detected and it is connected to the PC for the first time, it is probably not formatted, and therefore is not visible in the list of working devices. In this case, you should click on the media, creating a simple volume. This action will delete all information on the disk.

    If the PC stops seeing the external hard drive, most likely this situation is due to a lack of drivers or a system failure. Modern systems are quite “smart”, and when a new device appears, they quickly search for the appropriate driver. But sometimes, due to accumulated errors in the system, it does not detect the device.

    First of all, you need to examine the USB port. To do this, you can connect a flash drive, camera or smartphone. If the system sees the devices, then the port is working.

    It is also useful to explore the components of the device manager, it can be found in "Control Panels". The media icon is in "Other devices" or "Disk devices".

    PC drivers may be out of date. By clicking on the hard drive (there is an exclamation mark opposite it), you should select “Update drivers”. Finding drivers is provided by special programs or by searching on the Internet.

    Often Windows becomes outdated, this is the answer to why the computer does not see the external hard drive. The system must be reinstalled.

    Windows 10 doesn't see external hard drive

    Latest generation operating systems may also not detect old or new media. The media may be unformatted and have no partitions, and as a result may not be listed in Explorer.

    When you no longer see the Windows 10 external hard drive, you can go to the “Toolbar”, then to the “Security System” and to the “Administration” subsection. Next you should work with the section “Creating and managing hard drives”.

    If you enter the command “diskmgmt.msc” in the search, a utility called "Disk Management". In this case, you can see the media, and sections of it will have a blue tint. An unallocated disk will be highlighted in black.

    You should click on the tab "Disc 1", then select "Initialize disk". Then you need to click on the black bar, and then on “New Section”. A section is formed in this location, where a free letter is assigned.

    Large format discs are divided into several parts. You can format the media with the NTFS file system. When the person presses the button "Ready", the system will display the media.

    If the PC does not see the external hard drive, provided that it is new, you can enter the BIOS, turn off AHCI, then reboot the computer and the drive will appear.

    Sometimes it is necessary to integrate SATA drivers into the Windows 10 operating system. Only the latest drivers should be installed. It is optimal if this work is entrusted to a competent person.

    External media does not show the PC if it has previously been subjected to mechanical stress. If the drive has been in use for a long time, then you can use special utilities to identify errors and bad blocks.

    Infection of the media with viruses becomes the reason why the external hard drive is not visible. Windows will block it. Also, the situation often arises due to failures in the motherboard; diagnostics are indicated.

    For a device to perform optimally, it must be in DMA mode. When the disk is functioning in PIO, you can open "Device Manager", and then "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers". Next you should find the category "Advanced options" and delete the secondary or primary IDE channels. The final stage involves rebooting the system. In addition, the problem can be solved by purchasing an additional cable.

    If the drive overheats, the system can turn it off. If necessary, a cooler is installed and the device is cleaned of dirt.

    The power supply that came with the drive may not have enough power. This will cause the system not to see the external hard drive. It is better to use the original cable; it has the required length and metallized latches.

    Hello, dear site visitors!

    It so happened that I needed to format it. It’s just that this hard drive is from a laptop, and when I gave the laptop in for warranty repairs, instead of an SSD drive, I installed a HDD back. Yesterday I picked up my laptop from repair and put the hard drive back in my pocket.

    I connected it to the computer on which the information was stored in order to transfer it to an external HDD, but it is not detected. Or rather, it is detected, Windows signals that a device is connected, an icon appears on the notification panel that a USB device is connected, and there is even an option to remove it.

    In the device manager, the external HDD is also displayed and works properly. But the whole problem is that the disk is not displayed in Windows Explorer. You go to my computer, but it’s not there.

    I connected this external hard drive to the laptop, still the same. It is detected, but it is not visible in the explorer. Yeah, that means it's the disk itself.

    I thought a little, then I googled it and realized that the disk was simply not allocated and it was necessary to create a partition on it. We will create it using the standard Windows tool for working with hard drives, which I wrote about.

    This could have been the end of the article, but I took a few screenshots, so I’ll show and tell you everything using a real example and how you like it – with pictures :).

    We need to open the Disk Management tool. To do this, open Start and right click on Computer. Select Control.

    On the left, select Disk Management. And this is the picture I saw (screenshot below). Disk 0– this is my SSD drive, there are created partitions there. A Disc 1, this is already my external hard drive, which was not displayed in Explorer. It says Not distributed. Now we'll distribute it :).

    Right click on it and select Create a simple volume...

    We need to specify the size for the partition we are creating. If you want to create one section, then you can not change anything, but simply click Next. The simple volume size field already indicates the maximum size for the partition we are creating.

    In the next window you need to assign a drive letter. I advise you to just click next and not change anything.

    Formatting a volume. I advise you to leave everything as is. You can change the volume label (this is its name). Click Next.

    We check the correctness of the parameters we entered and press the button Ready.

    External HDDs and SSDs are becoming more and more popular every day. This is not at all surprising, because this small box can contain a huge amount of information - up to 1-6 terabytes! For comparison, today not every PC even has an internal 1TB hard drive.

    But what to do when your computer or laptop does not see the external hard drive? In this article we will look at why this happens and how to properly solve this problem.

    If the new external hard drive is not detected

    In this situation, we mean a portable drive that you just purchased for your PC. First thing to do:

    1. Go to Control Panel/Make sure that “Small Icons”/Administration is selected in the “View” menu.


    3. In the left column, go to the “Disk Management” menu.



    4. Wait 5-10 seconds for the configuration to update, after which both internal and external media that are connected to the computer or netbook will be displayed. Quite often, a PC may not read media due to incorrect letter assignment.

    This is what needs to be changed. To do this, you need to right-click on our device and select “Change letter”.


    Another option why the laptop does not recognize the new hard drive is that it is not formatted

    In this case, you won’t even be able to change the name to something else. You need to right-click on the disk again, a menu will appear, and then click “Create Volume”. However, be careful! In this case, all information will be deleted from the HDD.

    A not so common problem is that the chip on the motherboard responsible for the functionality of the USB ports has failed. In 99% of cases, the solution to the problem is to repair the board.

    Lack of drivers is another most common reason

    If the hard drive is not visible either in Disk Management or in My Computer, but at the same time functions fully on other equipment, this is precisely the problem. Of course, modern Windows 7, 8, 10 are smart operating systems that search for and install drivers themselves in a fully automatic mode. However, sometimes they also make mistakes.

    In this situation it is necessary:

    1. Check the operation of the USB ports (2.0/3.0). If other devices work through them, then the problem is not with them at all.

    2. If everything is fine with the USB ports, but the hard drive still doesn’t work:

    Go to Control Panel/Make sure that “Small Icons”/Device Manager is selected in the “View” menu and select the “Other Devices” and “Disk Devices” sections.

    There you can find out whether the drivers for the connected media are installed.


    If there are red or yellow identification icons next to the name of the connected device (see screenshot above), it means that the drivers were not installed or were installed with errors; to fix this, you need to do one of the following options:

    1. Click “Update hardware configuration”, after which the installation will occur automatically.

    2. Use a special program to install the necessary drivers “DriverPack Solution, Driver Booster or others”

    3. Reinstall Windows OS.

    After completing simple steps, the HDD will operate as usual.

    If the old external HDD is not displayed

    In this case, we are talking about a hard drive that was previously functioning on your PC, but it stopped seeing it. In such a situation you should:


    Now you know how to find out the reason why the computer does not show the removable drive, and you can solve it yourself!

    In this article we will show you how to make sure that USBflash drive or SDthe card was detected in the Windows system like a regular local hard drive. You might ask, why is this necessary? The fact is that Windows by default defines USB flash drives and memory cards as removable drives, which cannot be divided into several partitions using Windows standards. And even if you split the flash drive into two or more partitions using third-party utilities (in the same Linux), then only the first of them will be available in the Windows OS (by the way, built-in appeared in Windows 10 1703). Those. Windows supports normal operation with multi-partitions only for HDD drives, which are defined in the system as local (i.e. non-removable).

    RMB bit and USB media

    Windows operating systems recognize USB flash drives as removable/removable devices due to the presence of a special bit descriptor on each device R.M.B.(removablemediabit) . If, when polling a connected device through the StorageDeviceProperty function, the system determines that RMB=1, it concludes that the connected device is a removable drive. Thus, in order to convert a USB flash drive into a hard drive from the system's point of view, it is enough to modify this descriptor. This can be done directly (which is quite risky due to differences in hardware implementations of specific devices, and is not always possible), or indirectly, by replacing the response of a USB device using a special driver that allows you to filter information in the device response.

    Advice. Some manufacturers produce special utilities for flashing the controller of their flash drives. First of all, try to find such a utility and/or firmware on the manufacturer’s website. This is the most correct way. If you don’t find such a utility, follow the recommendations from this article.

    Connect a USB flash drive to any free port on your computer, then open Disk Management Manager ( diskmgmt.msc) and make sure that its type is defined in the system as Removable(Removable device) .

    You can also see the device type on the Volumes tab in the disk properties (as we see here Type: Removable).

    Or using the diskpart command:

    List volume

    In this article we will look at two ways to change the RMB bit on a USB flash drive - by using the Hitachi filter driver (changes are made only at the driver level on a specific computer) and changing the bit in the controller firmware using the BootIt utility from Lexar (a more universal method, but there is a number of restrictions and does not apply to all models of flash drives and SD cards). Although both of these methods are quite old and I originally tested them on Windows 7, they continue to be relevant and work equally well in modern Windows 10.

    Lexar BootIt utility

    Recently I came across a rather interesting utility - LexarBootIt. This is a free, portable program that can change the RMB of a removable drive to make a removable USB device fixed (or vice versa). Even though the Lexar BootIt utility is designed for Lexar devices (Micron, Crucial), it can also work with flash drives from other manufacturers. The BootIt utility supports all versions of Windows, from Windows XP to Windows 10.

    Important. The utility is guaranteed to work for Lexar drives. Judging by the reviews, the “Flip removable bit” function does not work on fast USB 3.0 flash drives. In addition, when flashing the controller, you will lose the warranty on the flash drive and may make it inoperable.

    You can download BootIt on the Lexar website (lexar_usb_tool) or from our website ().

    • Run BootIt.exe with administrator rights
    • Select your flash drive from the list of devices
    • Click on the button Flip Removable Bit
    • Save your changes by clicking OK.

    Reconnect the device and use Device Manager to make sure that its type has changed from Removable to Basic.

    If the BootIt utility did not help change the RMB bit on a removable drive, try using the following method, based on the Hitachi Microdrive filter driver

    Filter driver for Hitachi Microdrive flash drives

    In order for a USB flash drive or SD card to be recognized in the system as a hard drive, we need a special filter driver that allows us to modify the data transmitted through the system stack of the current device driver. We will use a filter driver for USB flash drives from Hitachi ( Hitachi Microdrive driver), which at the OS driver level allows you to change the type of flash drive device from removable to fixed (USB-ZIP -> USB-HDD). Thanks to the use of this driver, you can hide from the system that the connected device is removable. As a result, the system will consider that it is working with a regular hard drive, which can be divided into partitions that will be simultaneously accessible in the system.

    Archives with Hitachi Microdrive driver:

    • 32 bit systems - (3.0 KB)
    • Hitachi Microdrive version for 64 bit systems - (3.8 KB)

    You need to download the driver version for your system according to its bit capacity. Both archives have the same structure and consist of two files:

    • cfadisk.inf– installation file with driver settings
    • cfadisk.sys- Hitachi driver file

    The next stage is identifying the device code of our flash drive. To do this, in the disk properties on the tab Details in the parameter Device Instance Path select and copy ( Ctrl+C) device instance code.

    In our example it would be:

    USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_Linux&Prod_File-CD_Gadget&Rev_0000\0123456789ABCDEF&0

    Let's say we plan to install the driver on 64 bit system. Using any test editor, open the file for editing cfadisk.inf. We are interested in the cfadisk_device and cfadisk_device.NTamd64 sections.

    %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDE\DiskTS64GCF400______________________________20101008 %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDE\DiskTS64GCF400______________________________20101008

    We change the value DiskTS64GCF400______________________________20101008 to the code of our device.

    Important! In the device instance code, it is necessary to discard the part after the second “\” (in our example we discard 0123456789ABCDEF&0).

    We get:

    %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDE\USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_Linux&Prod_File-CD_Gadget&Rev_0000 %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,IDE\USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_Linux&Prod_File-CD_Gadget&Rev_0000

    Save the file.

    If the driver is installed on a 32 bit system, you need to download the recommended archive, unpack it and open the cfadisk.inf file for editing. Let's find a section :

    %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_LEXAR&Prod_JD_LIGHTNING_II&Rev_1100 %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_JetFlash&Prod_TS1GJF110&Rev_0.00 %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\ DISK&VEN_&PROD_USB_DISK_2.0&REV_P

    Then we will change the data in the last line, indicating the code of the instance of our flash drive, i.e. in our example we get:

    %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_LEXAR&Prod_JD_LIGHTNING_II&Rev_1100 %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\Disk&Ven_JetFlash&Prod_TS1GJF110&Rev_0.00 %Microdrive_devdesc% = cfadisk_install,USBSTOR\ Disk&Ven_Linux&Prod_File-CD_Gadget&Rev_0000

    Advice. If you want the USB flash drive to be displayed with a specific name in the device manager, you need to edit the value of the Microdrive_devdesc variable, for example like this:
    Microdrive_devdesc = "Transcend 64GB DIY SSD"

    Installing the Hitachi Microdrive driver instead of the native USB drive driver

    All that remains is to replace the driver used by the USB flash drive.

    Important! If the Hitachi Microdrive USB driver is installed on a 64-bit system, then... There is no digital signature for this driver, you will have to either.

    Open the Drivers tab and click the button Update Drivers.

    Let's indicate the folder to the directory into which the downloaded archive with the Hitachi driver is unpacked:

    Let's select a new driver.

    We ignore the warning about the missing driver digital signature.

    Advice. In Windows 10 and Windows 8, when installing the driver, the following error appears:

    Windows found drivers for this device, but an error occurred when trying to install the drivers.
    Hitachi Microdrive
    Third party inf does not contain signature information

    To disable driver digital signature verification, run the following commands:

    bcdedit.exe /set nointegritychecks ON
    bcdedit.exe /set TESTSIGNING ON

    Restart your computer and try to install the driver again.

    All that remains is to restart the computer and, by opening the disk manager, make sure that your flash drive is now recognized as a regular hard drive ( Type: Basic), and the Hitachi driver is used as the driver.

    By opening Explorer, you can also make sure that the icon of the flash drive has changed; it is now displayed as a hard drive, a regular drive.

    Now you can work with this flash drive like a regular HDD: create partitions, specify the active partition, create dynamic disks, install software that does not work from flash drives, etc.

    Important. On other Windows computers without this driver, the second partition of the device will not be available.

    To remove the Hitachi Microdrive driver, open the disk properties and on the Driver tab, click the Update Driver button - the system will install the native driver itself.


    Advice. If after installing the Hitachi driver the system stops booting with BSOD, you need to boot the computer from the Windows installation disk / Live CD and manually delete the following files:

    • cfadisk.sys in the %windir%\System32\drivers directory
    • Directory "cfadisk.inf_amd64_..." from %windir%\System32\DriverStore\FileRepositoty

    Restart your computer

    You need to understand that this solution will only work on the system on which the appropriate driver is installed.

    My external hard drive is not detected, what to do about it? is a fairly common question on the Internet that can be found on a large number of forums. And every day the number of such questions increases. There were no portable hdds - there were, as they say, no problems :-). But in fact, portable hdds are very convenient storage media that are increasingly coming into use and becoming everyday and familiar, just like regular flash drives. Like any device, they can be faulty. It happens that the computer cannot recognize the drive connected to it. What to do if the external hard drive is not detected?

    First steps if the external hard drive is not detected

    If you experience this kind of problem, the cause may be:

    • the disk itself;
    • or computer problems.

    You need to start looking for the problem by checking the USB ports on your computer. The portable hdd must be connected using a different port or another computer. If the other computer recognizes the external hard drive, then you should troubleshoot the USB port. If the computer refuses to detect other devices, then you should check USB support and connect it by going into the BIOS.

    Device Driver Update

    The external drive is not detected if there is a problem with the driver. To eliminate it, you need to do the following: right-click on the “My Computer” shortcut and select “Device Manager” (1):

    Click on the line “Disk devices” (2), and select the external hdd (3), right-click on it and select “Update drivers”

    If the update does not bring the desired result, then the driver should be removed, restart the computer and install it again.

    Changing the hdd designation in the system

    It is quite possible that the external hard drive is not detected because the system assigned it the letter of an already connected drive. To fix this error you need to follow the following path:

    Start->Control Panel->Performance and Maintenance->Administrative Tools->Computer Management

    Select “Disk Management” (4) and right-click, find your hdd (5) and select “Change drive letter or disk path” (6) and assign the drive another letter that is free:

    Lack of nutrition

    If checking the USB ports shows they are working, then the external hard drive may not be detected because it does not have enough power. This may be caused by the use of an extension cord, which causes a large loss of energy. To avoid this problem, it is recommended to connect the external drive using the standard cable included in the kit. Connection is made through the port located on the rear panel.

    Using the power supply

    In cases where the drive has two connectors required to connect to two USB ports, both should be connected. Also, if the storage device has an additional power supply, it should be used.

    When an external drive is not detected, the reason for this may be shortcomings in the power supply, caused either by its obsolescence or by the large amount of equipment installed on it. In this case, the best solution would be to install a power supply with a higher power.

    Mechanical damage to hdd

    If the external hard drive is not detected, then its malfunction may be to blame. This is checked by applying power to it. If the device is silent (there are no characteristic sounds), then you should not try to solve the problem yourself. After all, the causes of the malfunction may lie in magnetic heads, bearing jamming, spindle motor winding, controller or microcircuit. You should not connect the drive again and again, as this could permanently damage it. In this case, it must be taken to a service center. Only specialists with equipment and the necessary knowledge and experience can accurately determine the malfunction, fix it, if possible, and answer your question: why the external hard drive is not detected.

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