External drive errors

Tasmania Green · Aug 23, 2025

I plugged my external drive into my pc for the first time since the beginning of the year. It's an SSD that I put into an external case. I put it together after building my first pc and used it to backup the computer using the Hasleo Backup Suite. I found Hasleo to be too confusing so today I installed IDrive. I would like to use my external drive as a local backup my pc.

Unfortunately, my computer is not recognising my external drive and says there is an error. I think I should reformat the external drive. However, since I consider myself still very new to tinkering with pc's I wanted to get the opinion of the people here since most of you have more computer experience than I do.

1- The first screenshot is the error message I received when I connected the external drive.
2- The second screenshot is the information from Disk Management.
3- The third screenshot is of my internal C drive. I'm including this to help ensure I don't erase it. That would be, in technical terms, "bad." lol.

What are your thoughts?

PerpetualCycle · Aug 23, 2025

Have you tried a different USB port and a different cable?

Tasmania Green · Aug 23, 2025

PerpetualCycle said:
Have you tried a different USB port and a different cable?

Yeah. That was the first thing I tired.

abactuon · Aug 23, 2025

Tasmania Green said:
external case

Check on another computer.

Tasmania Green said:
IDrive

But there is only 5GB for free.

PerpetualCycle · Aug 23, 2025

If you installed idrive before this issue occured, try u installing it.

Tasmania Green · Aug 23, 2025

PerpetualCycle said:
If you installed idrive before this issue occured, try u installing it.

I would like to do that. But I don't know which drive I'm working with.

mngerhold · Aug 23, 2025

Tasmania Green said:
I would like to do that. But I don't know which drive I'm working with.

You must surely have installed it on the C: drive?

Helmut · Aug 23, 2025

Go to the Device Manager > View > Show hidden devices > Disk drives.

You should see signs of the drive greyed out.
Once you are 100% it is the correct drive right click > uninstall device.

Then scan for Hardware changes, and hope...

glasskuter · Aug 23, 2025

Since the external drive is not recognized, all those partitions you see in disk management are your system drive partitions. As was suggested, connect the external drive to another computer to see if that computer recognizes the drive.

If it is NOT recognized by another computer,
either the drive itself OR the enclosure has a problem. To prove which it is, you would have to remove the drive from the enclosure and do one of 2 things - connect the drive internally to test the validity of the drive itself OR put it into another enclosure to prove whether its the enclosure causing the problem.

If it IS recognized by another computer,
then you would look inward to it being an issue with this computer.

Helmut · Aug 23, 2025

Remove the SSD from the Enclosure, and you should be seeing something like this with just the Enclosure in Disk Management and Device Manager.
I do not have a spare SSD to put in my enclosure.

View attachment 143205 View attachment 143206

Tasmania Green · Aug 24, 2025

It looks like a bad external drive even a second computer wasn’t reading it.

I’ll have to get another external drive. May want to make one myself after I read up on how to do it.

Scannerman · Aug 24, 2025

Tasmania Green said:
It looks like a bad external drive even a second computer wasn’t reading it.

I’ll have to get another external drive. May want to make one myself after I read up on how to do it.

Not so fast. Since you are using a desktop here's a possible fix:

1. Open your case.
2. Make certain your PC is shut down.
3. Open your external drive enclosure and remove the drive.
4. Connect the drive directly inside your case.
5. Boot up your PC and check Disk Management for the drive.

Sadly, Sabrent enclosures are notorious for bad bridges. Your drive might be fine or it may just need reformatting but we can proceed on nothing until we can get the drive to show. Now clearly it won't be drive 'C' as this is your main drive running your operating system. It might need a drive letter or it may need initialization. If it doesn't show at all after this then there is a good chance that drive is finished. You could proceed at a later time to try a different drive in your Sabrent enclosure to further validate.

I hope this helps

Tasmania Green · Aug 24, 2025

Scannerman said:
Not so fast. Since you are using a desktop here's a possible fix:

1. Open your case.
2. Make certain your PC is shut down.
3. Open your external drive enclosure and remove the drive.
4. Connect the drive directly inside your case.
5. Boot up your PC and check Disk Management for the drive.

Sadly, Sabrent enclosures are notorious for bad bridges. Your drive might be fine or it may just need reformatting but we can proceed on nothing until we can get the drive to show. Now clearly it won't be drive 'C' as this is your main drive running your operating system. It might need a drive letter or it may need initialization. If it doesn't show at all after this then there is a good chance that drive is finished. You could proceed at a later time to try a different drive in your Sabrent enclosure to further validate.

I hope this helps

After further checking, the drive is indeed bad. Well, at least I know now. I’m backing up my pc with IDrive so at least I have some backup. I would like to have a local backup as well, but that’s not necessary right this moment.

glasskuter · Aug 24, 2025

Considering I can restore a full system image stored locally and be back in business in 4 minutes, I cannot see how a cloud restore could come anywhere close to that.

Helmut · Aug 24, 2025

Ah, so it is a complete packaged USB SSD drive so no possibility of separating out the components.

Nothing you can do about it.

Scannerman · Aug 24, 2025

Helmut said:
Ah, so it is a complete packaged USB SSD drive so no possibility of separating out the components.

Nothing you can do about it.

Surprisingly it is often a controller chip that goes and frequently SSDs are saved by technicians who essentially make their livings in data recovery. So depending on how valued the data on the drive is there is still a chance that it can be recovered. BUT who wants to pay two thousand bucks to recover a $200 hard drive that no longer works?

Helmut · Aug 25, 2025

Irrelevant the OP is doing a backups, data recovery is not going to be required.

The OP also said "It's an SSD that I put into an external case."
That reads as an M.2 enclosure with an M.2 SSD plugged in, hence the comments, but apparently it is a packaged USB SSD. Thus my earlier comments seem to be irrelevant.

Tasmania Green · Aug 25, 2025

Thanks to everyone who added to this chat. I'm still new to building computers and working with tech and I appreciate learning from you.

Scannerman · Aug 25, 2025

Helmut said:
Irrelevant the OP is doing a backups, data recovery is not going to be required.

The OP also said "It's an SSD that I put into an external case."
That reads as an M.2 enclosure with an M.2 SSD plugged in, hence the comments, but apparently it is a packaged USB SSD. Thus my earlier comments seem to be irrelevant.

I'm assuming little here but allowing for the possibility that the drive could have been salvaged. Evidently the OP has concluded that this isn't the case. I can't say how many "packaged" enclosures I've cracked open and rescued the drives from but I've never done it with an enclosure using NVMe. If it were a SATA connection inside the drive there might have been a way to determine for certain that the drive was salvageable or not. I would imagine it could be done with a SATA M.2 drive as well. I was about to ask for pictures. The old Sabrent enclosures used to be especially known for weak USB bridges. I have no idea what sort of enclosure the OP was using nor do I have any idea if they were using a Sabrent enclosure. Western Digital "My Book" was another nasty in this regard. The old Seagates used to be somewhat more reliable. It would have been nice to see some pictures of the drive.

External drive errors

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