External Drive Showing As Local Drive-How Do I Fix It?
Is your external hard drive showing as local disk? Then it could be due to driver issues, viruses, spyware, or the computer would not support the drive capacity which eventually causes data loss.
Don’t worry, this article will help you resolve the issue with various solutions so make sure to read the complete article.
Written by Lucy John on March 14, 2024
Table of Contents:
- Fix External Hard Drive Shows Up As A Local Disk
- Using Command Prompt
- Update The External Hard Driver
- Uninstall The Drivers
- Check And Fix The File System Errors
- How Do I Get External Drive Data When It Is Detected As Local Drive On Your PC Yodot Hard Drive Recovery?
The first thing you need to check if your external hard drive’s file system is compatible with your computer. For Windows operating systems, NTFS is the recommended format. If you want a storage device to work on both Windows and macOS, exFAT is the best format for both
How to Fix External Hard Drive Shows up as a Local Disk?
Here is how to fix an external hard drive showing up as a local drive or a USB drive showing as a local disk using various methods.
Method 1: Fix External Hard Drive Detected as a Local Disk Using Command Prompt
Follow this method to access your external drive as removable media:
- On the keyboard press Windows + R keys, then type cmd and hit OK.
- A Windows command line will appear, type diskpart and hit Enter.
- Now, type list disk to show you the list hard disks with partitions and hit Enter.
- If you find your external hard drive, then type select disk number and hit Enter.
- Once you select the hard disk or partitions thank type clean and hit Enter.
- Now, type create partition primary.
- Then type the following
- Select partition
- format fs=ntfs quick
- type assign
- lastly type of exit
Method 2: Update the external hard drive driver
Step 1: Connect your external hard drive to the PC
Step 2: Right-click on This PC/My Computer icon, select Manage and go to Device Manager.
Step 3: Expand Disk drivers, right-click on the external hard drive, choose Update driver
Step 4: Select Search automatically for updated driver software.
Restart the PC, reconnect the device if the system requires it and check if the external hard drive showing up as a local disk issue is fixed.
Method 3: Uninstall the Drivers
Follow this simple solution to access your external drive as removable media:
Step 1: First unplug your external drive then go to Device Manager then click on View > show hidden devices.
Step 2: In the Disk drives hierarchy, right-click on the name of your external hard drive and select uninstall.
Step 3: Then go to Universal Serial Bus controllers hierarchy and look for USB Mass Storage device, right-click and uninstall it.
Step 4: At last, restart Windows; try reconnecting your external device, then Windows will start installing the necessary drivers for external storage devices.
Method 4: Check And Fix The File System Errors
Note: This method applies to fix corrupted file systems or existing errors, making the external hard drive show up as a local drive or the drive not opening.
Using the disk error checking tool or cmd, you can check your device for existing file system errors and fix them.
Note: Using chkdsk can help you fix the file system errors, however, it can lead to total data loss. In order to avoid data loss, we highly recommend you perform data recovery in advance and only then continue with the CMD method.
Step 1: Press Window + R keys simultaneously to open Run. Type cmd and hit Enter.
Step 2: Type diskpart and click OK.
Step 3: Type chkdsk G: /f /r /x and hit Enter. (Replace G with the correct drive letter of the external drive showing up as a local drive or the drive that is not opening).
Exit the command prompt and eject your external hard drive safely. It's better to restart your computer and try connecting the external hard drive that was showing as a local disk to see it opens normally.
Still if you fail to find your external drive as removable storage media then do not worry. You can utilize Hard Drive Recovery tool to retrieve files from external hard drive.
How Do I Get External Drive Data When It Is Detected As Local Drive On Your PC Yodot Hard Drive Recovery?
Yodot Hard Drive Recovery tool will help you to get back data from an external drive that is showing up as a local disk. It also ensures that data can be retrieved even if your external HDD is not detected, damaged, formatted, reformatted etc. Yodot Hard Drive Recovery tool is designed in such a way that the file can easily be restored with simple steps and instructions so that you can use it without any hassle.
Note: Connect your portable hard drive to a healthy Windows computer then follow the below steps.
Step 1: Run the Yodot Hard Drive Recovery tool on your PC.
Step 2: Click on the “Partition Recovery” option button, it will automatically navigate to the next window.
Step 3: Click on the external drive from the list of available drives and click on the “Next” button to continue to further step.
Step 4: Select file types that you want to recover and click the “Next” button to commence the scan.
Step 5: After scan, you can sort restored files in two different views, either in “Data View” or “File Type View”
Step 6: At the end, preview and save retrieved data in the desired destination.
After recovering data, format your external drive so that you can use your drive for further read and write operations.
Additional Yodot Hard Drive Recovery Tool Features:
As you learnt, this tool will help you to get back data from an external drive which is showing up as a local disk. Also, it ensures retrieval of data even when an external HDD not detected on your PC or else your external drive got damaged, formatted, reformatted etc. It facilitates restoration of files with simple steps along with instructions so that you can easily utilize this program without any difficulty.
Conclusion:
We hope the solutions listed in this article helped you solve the external hard drive showing up as a local disk issue. Additionally, taking precautionary measures like assigning a consistent drive letter for your external hard drive, keeping the drivers updated, and always ejecting the drive properly can prevent issues like this in the future.
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