My laptop does not recognize my external hard drive?

Yesterday I drove my laptop down and started up after about 3 hours. The external HDD WD Elements is always connected. That's what I've been doing for the last 6 months.

Yesterday something was wrong. There was suddenly no access to the external hard drive possible. Whenever I try to click the hard drive, nothing happens or the whole laptop hangs. I then have to unplug the hard drive so I can use the laptop again. If I then insert the hard disk again, the hard disk is displayed to me, but I can't do anything.

Now, if I want to open data recovery software, e.g. DataRescue, GetDataBack Simple or Recuva, can't open the respective software. First I have to disconnect the external hard drive and then connect again, then the software opens and the external software is displayed to me accordingly. If I now click on the affected hard disk, I get an error message: File system is not supported. In addition, it appears to me completely free even though I have at least 1TB photos on it.

I have some forums now, the following does not get me any further: Windows + r press and enter "devmgmt.msc" or diskmgmt.msc.

Everything I've tried so far does not work.

Does anyone have a solution here?

I use Windows 10, ASUS laptop and WD Elements 4TB external hard drive.

Thank you for help.

PS. I'm not a technology freak and unfortunately I have to deal with it very difficult: /

That sounds like what's broken.

To exclude the USB port from your laptop, you can first test the disk on another PC.

Then the controller may still be broken in the housing in which the plate is in it. You can find that out by getting the record out of there. This would have to be a SATA disk, which you can then normally s.einer PC on the SATA connector on the motherboard to it off.

Finally, either the hard disk itself may be broken, or, as already said, the file system has chopped it up. Then the info where on the record which file is lying destroyed and you can use the plate, if necessary, after a normal formatting again quite normal.

My tip: External hard drive never turn off, no USB sticks or something. Always disconnect and settle. Internal hard drive get a shutdown command when driving down, go to a basic position and write nothing more. A USB disk works Due to the conversion from USB to possibly SATA delayed. It may be that this command comes too late or that does not implement the USB interface. Then he just writes something and - Zack current away -. Data scrap. I have had a lot of friends already. Since it was always done as here, or just pulled off in the company.

Thanks for your info, I have another hard drive on the laptop and this works.

I will implement this with the separation in the future.

Regarding reformatting: Are not all the contents of the hard drive gone forever in a new formatting? My top priority is just that I want to save all the data and pull over to the working hard drive.

So if only the file system is broken, I think you can repair that. I do not know how. Maybe look at Google, believe in Windows there was a function, but you had to type in Dos window or prompt all by hand. I think that was ok with chkdsk or something. You can also run a disk repair program, such as SeaTools from Seagate.

But before you do all that, it would be better to test first, to clamp the plate directly in the PC. Not that only the USB controller in the HDD case is broken and the disk OK.

If you format, unfortunately everything is deleted, that's right. But if the file system can't be saved, then the data is there, but they can't be found. Except maybe from data recovery specialists and take a lot of kneading for what is not worthwhile for private.

I've just looked around a bit on these repair pages, but I find that not quite right.

As I connect the plate directly to the PC, unfortunately I have no idea. I would rather be afraid that I break even more.

Hm, I'll try again, thank you very much for your help.

Grade I noticed that the relevant external hard drive under file system does not display NTFS. Can this be related? Or,. Can I just reinstall that, whatever that is?

I just got a new answer with a photo, maybe you can look over it? Depends on NTFS.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, nothing works, so I had to bring the drive today in a PC store of my confidence. Now I hope that they can do it, without the hard drive must be sent, because that costs between 400 - 600 EURO…

@ DasQuitsch: Thanks again for your tips