my External Hard Disk doesn't appear

[MJREM]

my usb hard drive 500GB doesn't appear when i connect it with my laptop

but it works so fine if i connect it with the laptop and restart the laptop (that's mean it's works only if it boot with the windows)

**notice it 's not totally external hard drive it's internal hard drive with usb cable

i tried this solutions :

- all drives up to date
- i changed my windows from 7 to 10
- i've already formatted the the hard drive two times in different formats ntfs ,exfat



my laptop is Toshiba a500-19x :
core 2 duo 2.2Ghz
ram 4 GB
NVIDIA GeForce G210M


my opreation system windows 10 pro x64

can you guys please help me with this problem

[Geek-9pm]

MJREM,
For Windows, most Hard drives should be formatted as  NTFS
Also, how did you format the Hard Drive? With another  computer?

Even if a Hard drive is not formatted correctly, the system will see it when you plug it into the USB port. However, the system might not assign it a drive letter.

To see if your drive is present, but not mounted, go into tghe administrative tools and find the disk manager. The disk manager lists all drives, including any that do not have drive letters.

you get to the administrative things in control panel.

[DaveLembke]

USB Cable that connects to this drive both powers the drive as well as is for communication for the drive. My thoughts on this is that you need a replacement better quality cable that can power the drives current needs.

The drive is likely running borderline of its power/current needs and when connected at boot it has more time to spin up before the OS goes live, so when the OS is loaded the drive is ready. Connecting on the fly to an OS already running its likely taking too long to spin up and timing out because its not getting the current it needs to spin up in a timely manner. Going with a thicker USB cable can fix for this. Other things that can fix for this is to have this drive connected to a USB HUB so that its spun up and powered off a USB HUB and ready for the OS, but thats a band aid to usually a USB cable that is too lightweight to carry the initial current needs at start up of the drive. Listening to the drive you might hear it clicking or starting up and stopping over and over as its not starting up fast enough and then it bails and starts again and again.

I avoid external drives that are powered only off of USB power because of this problem. I have had data corrupt and lost due to USB power dropping out or flakey cable or cable that isnt heavy enough for power/current needs. Other alternative is to get a enclosure that has its own power supply so that its powered independent of any computers that it connects to.

[MJREM]

MJREM,
For Windows, most Hard drives should be formatted as  NTFS
Also, how did you format the Hard Drive? With another  computer?

Even if a Hard drive is not formatted correctly, the system will see it when you plug it into the USB port. However, the system might not assign it a drive letter.

To see if your drive is present, but not mounted, go into tghe administrative tools and find the disk manager. The disk manager lists all drives, including any that do not have drive letters.

you get to the administrative things in control panel.

it was a primary internal hard drive for my laptop and i change it because i got some bad sectors and i formatted it with the same laptop
now it formatted in NTFS and it's doesn't appear even in disk manager
but it works fine if i boot it with windows

[MJREM]

it was a primary internal hard drive for my laptop and i change it because i got some bad sectors and i formatted it with the same laptop
now it formatted in NTFS and it's doesn't appear even in disk manager
but it works fine if i boot it with windows

i'll try your tips

[patio]

No need to quote every Post...

[Allan]

You've got this same question going on multiple forums. In order to avoid duplication of efforts and/or conflicting advice you should let everyone (on each forum) know exactly what you are doing and what advice you are following.

[patio]

His solution as stated above is a an external enclosure with A/C power....the symptoms were properly diagnosed by Dave...

Course he likely won't do that...

[MJREM]

You've got this same question going on multiple forums. In order to avoid duplication of efforts and/or conflicting advice you should let everyone (on each forum) know exactly what you are doing and what advice you are following.

ok . If I got the solution i will post reply ( in both forums ) with the advice that i followed