External hard drive

[Lady100]

For no apparent reason our external hard drive stopped working. We need last year's income taxes off of it. Any suggestions?????

[Jeet_singh]

Hi @Lady100,

Welcome to HP Forums, this is a great place to get support, find answers and tips, Thank you for posting your query, I'll be more than glad to help you out. I came across your post and wanted to assist you, I understand you are having issues with your external hard drive not being detected on the computer. I'll try my best to help you with this,

To provide you with an accurate solution, I'll need a few more details:

Have you tried using a new USB port or USB cable?

Are you able to use any other USB device?

Do you get any error message?

When you plug in the USB cable does the computer make any noise?

Try plugging it into a different USB port on your PC.  Then from the Start Menu, click the Control Panel, open Administrative Tools, Computer Management, Storage and then Disk Management.  Does the drive show up here?

For more details, please click here

Could please elaborate more on the issue, as this will help me in further assisting you,

Feel free to post your query for any other assistance as well,

It's been a pleasure interacting with you and I hope you have a good day ahead.

If you wish to show appreciation for my efforts, 

mark my post as Accepted Solution.

And click on the Purple Thumbs up icon at the bottom of my comment.

Regards,

[Lady100]

We did change the USB cord and we did try a different port.
There is no error message.
I followed your steps and the drive does not show up.
The power light does not come on the external hard drive. It is getting power, the cord has been checked.
Any suggestions?
Thank you!!

[Jeet_singh]

Hi @Lady100,

Thank you for replying,

I appreciate your time and efforts,

As I understand you have tried the steps suggested and still the external hard drive is not getting detected. this clearly indicates a hardware failure. I would recommend you contact our HP phone support for further assistance. Please fill in the product details to get the tech support number.

Please use the following link to create yourself a case number, then call and it may help speed up the call process:

Step 1. Open link: www.hp.com/contacthp/

Step 2. Enter Product number or select to auto detect

Step 3. Scroll down to "Still need help? Complete the form to select your contact options"

Step 4. Scroll down and click: HP contact options - click on Get phone numberCase number and phone number appear.

They will be happy to assist you immediately.

Keep me posted for any other assistance,

Feel free to post your query for any other assistance as well,

It's been a pleasure interacting with you and I hope you have a good day ahead.

If you wish to show appreciation for my efforts, 

mark my post as Accepted Solution.

And click on the Purple Thumbs up icon at the bottom of my comment.

Regards,