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I've put myself in a bit of pain. I was working with my external drive and got impatient. Windows Explorer was not responding so I unplugged the drive. After that I killed the Explorer process. Now after getting Explorer running, my external hard drive doesn't show up. Neither in Explorer or Disk Management.

So is that it? Is the drive broken, or is there a way to fix it? It probably doesn't matter, but I'm on Windows 11. The drive is WD Elements

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    If you need stuff off it, I find that leaving it in the freezer for a few hours can give it 10s of minutes of life (depending on whats wrong with it). I have often been able to get my data off a failed drive like this.
    – Rohit Gupta
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 12:41
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    @RohitGupta You've been very lucky. Please don't do this ever. This might be an interesting read too:,unix.stackexchange.com/questions/112050/…
    – Zimano
    Commented Aug 3, 2022 at 8:59
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    @Zimano - You can say what you like but this technique has been working for decades. It is obviously the last resort.
    – Rohit Gupta
    Commented Aug 3, 2022 at 12:38
  • @RohitGupta I respectfully disagree. IMO, if the data is critical, then a (good) data recovery company should be used
    – cocomac
    Commented Aug 3, 2022 at 17:32

4 Answers 4

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This sounds like if the drive was already dying and Explorer locked up because of that.
If it is a USB attached drive Windows may still see the USB-SATA chip inside the WD housing (which gives you device plugged/unplugged messages), but can't see the disk itself anymore.

Anyway: Shut down the computer and if the WD has its own powersupply disconnect that too.
Then start everything back up in this order: Laptop first. Then WD. Only then plug the WD back into the computer.
If you are lucky Windows will recognize the drive again. If so have Windows check it for errors befor eyou do anything else first. (Windows may even suggest that, but if it doesn't you have to do it yourself.)

If it doesn't come back you can try it on another computer. You can also open up the housing and take the actual disk out and hook that up directly to a computer by SATA. (In case the USB-SATA converter chip is broken, but it doesn't sounds likely from your comments that is the problem.)

If you can access the content of the disk copy your important files to another medium immediately. I would consider this disk to be compromised and wouldn't trust it for important data anymore.

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    I've send it to a specialist. I don't dare opening it myself XD
    – Paco 2015
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 15:38
  • @Paco2015 Just for the record - opening the plastic housing of external drives should be fairly safe. There's always a chance you can break something but breaking a plastic casing is usually as bad as it sounds - you have a broken case while everything else still works as it did. What you don't want to do is open the actual drive itself (metal cover).
    – MBender
    Commented Aug 3, 2022 at 21:28
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The drive's not responding and causing Explorer to freeze was probably because of a hardware failure.

If the disk is now not showing up at all in Device Manager after rebooting the computer, then it's probably failed.

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  • What to do then to recover the data and eventually fix the drive?
    – Paco 2015
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 11:54
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    Listen to the servo on power up. If it sounds like it is hitting endstop for a few cycles, that's the "kiss of death"
    – Tony Stewart EE75
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 12:03
  • Which means no way to recover?
    – Paco 2015
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 12:13
  • With external harddisks, its also possible that the drive is constructed as follows: Hard disk conects to controller, controller connects to your device using usb or other connection. If the controller dies (happens more often than not) it is possible to open the case and extract the harddisk. The disk itself is usually fine but you need to find another way to connect it to your pc. This is not always possible though.
    – LPChip
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 12:19
  • Could be that. My computer register a device being unplugged/plugged in
    – Paco 2015
    Commented Aug 2, 2022 at 12:22
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Unplugging brutally the drive while it is working may result in some sectors damaged, but rarely in a total hardware failure. It is possible that the drive had problems before it was unplugged.

If it was not functioning properly you may have some messages in the event log have a look at event viewer if there are some warnings. Was it a SMART drive? Failures of the SMART protocol are often logged.

If you want to take the optimistic approach have a look at the USB cable you used to connect the drive. External drives suck a lot of power and many USB cables are not good enough to power them. If you didn't use the cable that was bundled with the drive it may happens that it struggles for a while and then it disappears.

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    Commented Aug 3, 2022 at 14:48
  • Go away @Community, this answer is fine.
    – Brad
    Commented Aug 6, 2022 at 2:33
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Assuming the drive only has a simple "dumb" USA/SATA controller without encryption and similar beauties, and exactly this controller failed, you may be able to recover data by removing the hard drive and putting it into another external enclosure. There are empty enclosures available on the market where you can put various third party drives, assuming the size and protocol (likely SATA, may be PCI/Express for SSD in these days) is compatible.

But this will not help if the drive itself failed.

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