my external toshiba stor.e 1tb hdd isn't being recognized by my toshiba laptop any more?

racefaceec90

it was working fine earlier on. i shut down my laptop,as i had an appointment.

when i returned though and switched my laptop on there is no sign of my hdd in the menu (although the hdd light does go on as if it is working as usual?)

i have restarted the laptop numerous times,and done a boot time scan with avast,but the laptop still doesn't recognize my hdd is connected usb port 3.0.

can anyone shed any light onto how to solve this issue (as all my music/videos are on it).

thank you in advance :-)

TheMarlin

TheMarlin

Have you tied it with different USB ports?

Did you eject it before you closed the PC down?   What's the operating system?

M

mart

And what colour socks were you wearing?

Danny1969

Most external USB drives are a standard SATA drive connected to a SATA to USB convertor and put in a box. Sometimes just the converter bit goes faulty in which case you can remove the drive from it's existing box and put it in another one. You can buy the empty boxes from places like Novatech or Maplin \ CPC etc

Sometimes a fault with the drive occurrs though and renders the fat table and partion unreadable. Is it viewable in disk manager ?  right click my computer - then "manage" then "disk management" in the left hand pane and see if you can see drive in the right hand pane 

The above is for Win7 - for Win 8 see below 

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/windows-8/a/disk-management-windows-8.htm ;

racefaceec90

yes i have tried turning it off and on  again :-p

i also tried it with all usb ports too.

there is no sign of the hdd at all in the disk defragmentation menu or my pc menu.

the strange thing is that when i unplug it then plug it in again,the computer makes that chimey sound that usually means you have plugged something into the pc laptop (win 8.1 btw) and the hdd light activates as usual.

only nothing more happens :-(

am at a loss tbh (not difficult though for me ;-)

TheMarlin

This might help

Marlin

racefaceec90

i tried that link and followed the info. i deleted the driver for the usb 3.0 but i cannot find a driver software download for my  toshiba STOR.E BASICS - 2.5" - 1TB hdd :-(

have been on the toshiba site,but there is no download link to get the drivers from?

win keeps asking me if i want to auto update the driver but it never finds anything when it looks online?

why then hell did this happen any way (i didn't do anything different to what i usually do.)

am fed up now.  

grungebob

Do you have another pc you can connect it to? Have you tried going into the bias on startup to see if it will recognise as a boot? If another pc will recognise it you can repair the boot sector and then it should work again on your laptop

racefaceec90

it seems that the 3.0 usb port isn't being recognized (as in not installed) that was no doubt due to me uninstalling it as one of the microsoft advice links (was trying to get windows to update the driver,but it never finds any update software online?!)

toshiba help page is worse than usless tbh (have sent them an e-mail but am not holding my breath about them fixing the issue/my hdd is now obsolete).

it looks like all my music e.t.c is now lost :-( because of some stupid messing up by either windows or the hdd (still have absolutely no idea why this has happened?)

thanks a lot for your help everyone btw (i'm just stupid when it comes to pc stuff).

grungebob

If it's just a driver issue for the usb 3 port the drive should be fine, try it in another pc. Do you know the make of the mother board?

rpr

racefaceec90 said:

it seems that the 3.0 usb port isn't being recognized (as in not installed) that was no doubt due to me uninstalling it as one of the microsoft advice links (was trying to get windows to update the driver,but it never finds any update software online?!)

Could be worth doing a system restore to a point before this happened or to when you knew your laptop was working.

beed84

^ This. It could remove some recent update which is preventing your HD from working.

racefaceec90

thanks for all the help,but have just factory reset my pc.have lost everything i had,but the port is working now (although still not recognizing the toshiba hdd :-(

am fed up of pc's tbh and all the shit that goes wrong with them,and never being able to get a straight answer form a company help page.

almost felt like chucking the laptop out the window,but refrained ;-)

at least i got my new staytem bridge delivered for my jag though,so it's not all bad :-)

beed84

racefaceec90 said:

almost felt like chucking the laptop out the window

That'd be a great advert for Apple. Besides the brilliant play on words, I think a lot of people would relate to it.

Seriously, though. It's a shitter that you've lost all what's on your PC; however, I'm pleased that the bridge for your Jag has softened the blow somewhat.  Hope you make some sort of amends on the laptop/HD front. 

sweepy

Is it formatted to NTFS or Fat32 ?

racefaceec90

it was to NTFS format.

my friend says that i could take it back to tesco for a full refund (i bought it around the middle of this year) he said that i am guaranteed for a year from any defects,and can get a full refund. 

if that's true i may well see if i can do so.

thanks for your help again everyone