11 Fixes for Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working/Showing Up – Qiling  

11 Fixes for Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working/Showing Up


1TB Toshiba External Hard Drive Is Not Working and Undetectable, Help!

"Hi there, do you know how to make external hard drive show up in PC when it failed to be detected? I have 1TB Toshiba external hard drive with almost 500GB data saved on it. It suddenly disappeared from my PC but the light of the drive is still on. What's going on with my drive? Do know you how to fix this issue?"

Toshiba external hard drive not working.

External hard drive not showing up or detected is just one of the many situations that indicate your Toshiba hard drive is not working. To help you fix your problematic device quickly, you should specify your situation according to the steps below before applying the fixes for "Toshiba external hard drive not working".

Step 1.Connect your Toshiba hard disk to your computer using the Toshiba cable.

Step 2.Go to "This PC" > "Manage" > "Disk Management".

Then you will see yourself in one of the following cases:

Fixes for Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working

When your Toshiba hard drive is not working, you may find yourself in one of the situations listed above. Identify your situation and follow to see the possible causes and the solutions to fix your Toshiba hard drive.

Workable Solutions Step-by-step Troubleshooting
Fix 1. Detectable But Inaccessible If you find your Toshiba disk isn't showing any files, you can...Full steps
Fix 2. Detected But Not Showing Files Try every USB port available; Determine you're using USB 2.0 or 3.0...Full steps
Fix 3. Toshiba Not Showing Up Check the hard drive connection > update Toshiba driver > send for manual repair...Full steps
Fix 4. Toshiba Not in This PC Update Toshiba driver > change drive letter...Full steps
Fix 5. Light Blinking But Not Working This is a common issue that happens to external hard drives from all the brands...Full steps

Fix 1. Toshiba External Hard Drive Is Detectable But Inaccessible

Possible causes: MBR corruption, I/O device error, file system errors...

You may see your Toshiba external hard drive state is "Not Initialized" or "No Media" in Disk Managemen, your disk shows RAW file system or the partition on it is lost (showing as unallocated space). All make your device inaccessible. To fix "Toshiba external hard drive not working" in the last two situations, you can:

Method 1. Recover Data from the Toshiba External Hard Drive and Format It

If the partition on your Toshiba disk is RAW, don't worry. You can use the hard drive recovery software - Deep Data Recovery to recover data from the inaccessible disk and then format the device to assign a new file system to it, which will make it usable again.le again.

To recover data from your RAW drive:

Step 1. Select file types that you want to recover

Use a correct USB cable to connect your external hard drive to your computer. Launch Deep Data Recovery, because there will be a lot of scanned files, you can choose a file category for quick filtering, such as Pictures, Videos, Documents, Audio.

select scanned file types

Step 2. You will see your external disk under External drives. This software supports all the popular external disk brands, including WD, Seagate, Toshiba, LaCie, SanDisk, Samsung, etc.

Select the external hard drive and then click the "Scan" button. 

select your seagate external hard drive and click scan

Step 3. As soon as the scan process starts, the software will find more and more lost and deleted data and display the data in the scan results. The recovered data will be nicely organized. You can quickly find the target files/folders by file type or search in the search box with exact file name. 

select files and click recover

Step 4. You can preview the files found by Deep Data Recovery's scanning algorithms. Then, select files and click "Recover". To avoid data overwriting, we recommend that you save the recovered data to a different drive than the original Seagate drive.te drive.

To format your Toshiba disk:

Step 1.Open "This PC", click your RAW drive or RAW disk and choose "Formatted".

Step 2.Set a file system (NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT) according to your needs and click "Proceed".

Step 3.In the Warning window, click "OK" to start formatting your storage medium.

Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working - Format the device

Method 2. Recover Data from the Toshiba Disk and Create Partition

You may see your Toshiba hard drive showing up as unallocated space because the partition is lost. In such a case, you can also use the Qiling data recovery software to recover data from your Toshiba external hard drive and then create new partitions on it to make it usable. Since the way to perform data recovery has been detailed already, here we will show you how to create new partitions on your disk only.

Step 1.Right-click "This PC", choose "Manage" > "Disk Management".

Step 2.Right-click the unallocated space and choose "New Simple Volume".

Step 3.Follow the wizard to finish the remaining process.

Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working - Create New Partition

Fix 2. The Toshiba External Hard Drive Is Detected But Not Showing Files

If you find your Toshiba disk isn't showing any files, you can refer to the article about "pen drive not showing data" to make your files show up again.

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If you are having a similar issue on your hard drive, you may directly try the fixes below. 

How to Fix Hard Drive Not Showing Up in Windows

Are your hard drives, be it new or old, internal or external, not showing up in File Explorer or Disk Management? Follow to learn how to make your hard drive showing up again in Windows 10/8/7 without losing data.

Hard drive not showing up

Fix 3. Toshiba External Hard Drive Is Not Showing Up in This PC and Disk Management

Possible causes: Connection issues, outdated Toshiba external hard drive driver, physical damage on the disk

Based on the possible reasons why your Toshiba external hard drive is not working, you have three methods to try:

Method 1. Check the Hard Drive Connection

There are many tips you can try to check the connection between your Toshiba external hard drive and your computer.

Method 2. Update the Toshiba External Hard Drive Driver

If the Toshiba hard drive is still not working, try to update the device driver. An outdated or corrupted hard drive driver will cause some problems while using the device. Since your hard drive is not detected by the PC, you cannot update the driver via Device Manager. Go to the official site of Toshiba, then download and install the latest driver by entering your model or the serial number of your disk.

Method 3. Send for Manual Repair

If you are sure there is physical corruption on your Toshiba external hard drive or the disk is still not working after trying the methods above, you are recommended to send the Toshiba hard drive for manual repair.

Consult with Qiling data recovery experts for one-on-one manual recovery service. We could offer the following services after a FREE diagnosis.

  • Fix HDD, SSD, external hard drive, USB flash drive errors, and restore data from all RAID levels
  • Recover lost partition that cannot be restored by data recovery software
  • Fix disks that cannot be read or accessed because of bad sectors
  • Fix disks that become GPT protected partitions
  • Wipe data, unformat hard drive, Install/uninstall software or driver, etc.

Fix 4. Toshiba External Hard Drive Is Showing Up In Disk Management But Not in This PC

Possible Causes: Toshiba external hard drive driver issues, drive letter conflicts

A Toshiba external hard drive that is not working in such a case may be caused by a problematic device driver or a drive letter conflict between your Toshiba external disk and the partition on your computer. The solutions are easy:

Method 1. Update Toshiba External Hard Drive Driver

Since your device is detectable, you can update the driver via the Device Manager.

Step 1.Connect the Toshiba external hard drive to PC, right-click on "This PC" (in Windows 10), and choose "Properties".

Step 2.Click "Device Manager" then expand "Disk drives". Find and right-click the problematic USB drive and select "Update driver"r"r"

Step 3.Click "automatically search for driver software online".

Step 4. Wait for the driver to be updated, then reboot your computer. Afterward, you can try to reconnect your USB drive to your PC and check whether the USB drive shows up or not.

Toshiba external hard drive not working - update device driver

Method 2. Change Drive Letter

Step 1.Go to "This PC", right-click it, and choose "Manage" > "Disk Management".

Step 2.Right-click the volume on your USB flash drive/external hard drive and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths".

Step 3.In the new window, click "Change".

Step 4.Assign a new drive letter to your USB and click "OK".

Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working - Change Driver Letter

Fix 5. Toshiba External Hard Drive Light Blinking But Not Working

This is a common issue that happens to external hard drives from all the brands including Toshiba, Seagate, Samsung, and more. The solutions to "Toshiba external hard drive not working" in such a case are the same as the ones to "Seagate external hard drive light blinking but not working", regardless of the brands.

Other Fixes for Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working

In addition to the commonest cases, there are other situations in which your Toshiba external hard drive is not working properly. Thus, there are other tips worth trying if the methods above fail to bring your device back to normal.

Workable Solutions Step-by-step Troubleshooting
Fix 1. Check Power Management Click Start, type: devmgmt.msc and hit "Enter"...Full steps
Fix 2. Reboot to Safe Mode Go to Settings, click on "Update & security". Tab on "Recovery"...Full steps
Fix 3. Use Partition Manager Launch Qiling Partition Master Free and right-click the partition...Full steps
Fix 4. Run CMD Press "Win + R" to open Run dialog and...Full steps

Fix 1.Check Power Management for USB Hub

If this doesn't work, try Fix 2.

Fix 2. Reboot PC into Safe Mode 

In order to thoroughly check out and find the exact problem, you can try to reboot the PC into Safe Mode to see where Toshiba external hard drive can work or not:

If not, don't worry. Effective fixes and solutions are available to help to fix Toshiba's external hard drive not working issue right now.

Disk check can effectively fix and repair some internal errors on your storage devices, even including the hard disk drive not working issue. Here you have two options to get this issue fixed:

Fix 3. Fix Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working with Free Partition Manager

Step 1. Launch Qiling Partition Master Free and click the partition that you want to check by clicking "Surface test".

Fix Toshiba external hard drive not working error.

Step 2.Click "Proceed" to continue and let this program check all found errors on the Toshiba external hard drive.

Fix Toshiba external hard drive not working error.

Fix 4. Fix Toshiba External Hard Drive Not Working by Running CMD

Warning
Running chkdsk can hopefully fix the drive not working issues, however, it can also result in total data loss. So, perform data recovery in advance, and then continue with the CMD method.

Then you can check to see whether this has worked to repair your Toshiba external hard drive or not.

Qiling CleanGenius is a user-friendly computer fixing tool that is both safe and lightweight. It's a perfect alternative to CHKDSK command. Use this one-click tool to fix the damaged file system easily.

Step 1. DOWNLOAD Qiling CleanGenius on your computer and complete the installation.

Step 2. Run the software. Click "Optimization", and then choose "File Showing" . 

Step 3. Select the drive with a corrupted file system. Tick the "Check and fix file system error" option and click "Execute".

Step 4. Wait the tool performs the repairing task. After that, click the "here" button to check the drive.

Then check out whether any device shows up as unrecognized or not:

The Botton Line

When your Toshiba external hard drive is not working, figure out the specific situation and then follow the corresponding solutions to fix it, which is more time-consuming than trying the tips one by one. If none of the fixes help to fix "Toshiba hard drive not working", other than sending the device for manual repair, you can also get it replaced if it is still under warranty.

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