Seagate External Hard Drive Not Working – How to Fix It?

Why Does Seagate External Hard Drive Not Work?

A Seagate external hard drive, as a great portable storage device, is a popular choice for data saving. But there is one downside usually haunting people a lot – sometimes, the external drive does not work.

The Seagate external hard drive not working issue can include Seagate hard drive not responding, detected, or recognized. Besides, those issues commonly happen on Windows 10 because of bad compatibility.

Of course, not all Windows 10 users will face the not working issue with the Seagate external hard drive. Sometimes, some other reasons can trigger the Seagate external hard drive not responding issues, such as a damaged USB header on the motherboard, USB port issues, or a faulty hard drive cable.

Apart from that, if your Seagate external hard drive has been physically damaged, the data in it will be lost forever.

It is easy to ignore that the outdated Windows system or disk drive can also make Seagate external hard drive can’t work.

After knowing the possible culprits that lead to the Seagate external hard drive not working issue, you can go to the next part for some easy methods.

Related articles:

• Pick up a Right Seagate External Hard Drive for You
• Here Are 3 Seagate Backup Software for You to Back up Hard Drive
• How to Diagnose Seagate Hard Drive? Use These Seagate Disk Tools

Some Quick and Easy Tips to Check and Try!

Before you start the solutions, you can go through the following easy and quick tips to check if the issue is caused by physical issues. The basic troubleshooting methods are listed below:

1. Check the cable and hard drive itself for any visible physical damage.
2. Take care of the audio cues. If you have heard it but Seagate external hard drive is not recognized when you insert the drive into the PC, the issue is software-related; if you do not hear the sound, the drive may have been damaged.
3. Restart your computer.
4. Reconnect the Seagate external hard drive.
5. Try other USB ports.
6. Make sure the USB contact points and the USB drive are clean from dust and grime.

After you have checked and tried the above tips, with nothing helpful, you can jump to the next part to configure some settings for the hard drive’s normal function.

How to Fix “Seagate External Hard Drive Not Working”?

Method 1: Run Hardware and Device Troubleshooter

Windows hardware and devices troubleshooter is specifically designed to troubleshoot some hardware or device issues. With this built-in tool, the Seagate external hard drive not working issue can be easily resolved.

Please follow the next steps to run the troubleshooter.

Step 1: Click Start (the Windows icon) and then Settings.

Step 2: Choose Update & Security and then in the Troubleshoot tab from the left panel, choose Additional troubleshooters from the right panel.

Then, you can find the hardware and devices troubleshooter, select it to scan, and fix the found issues.

If you can’t find the option in Additional troubleshooters, you can read this article to find the missing tool: Fixed! Hardware and Device Troubleshooter Is Missing Windows 10.

Method 2: Install the Driver in Compatibility Mode

Since most of you will encounter the compatibility issue with a Seagate external hard drive, you can try to install the Seagate external hard drive in compatibility mode and see if the not working issue can be fixed.

First of all, please download Paragon for your Seagate external hard drive and then you can insert the drive into your PC.

Step 1: Right-click on the downloaded file and choose Properties.

Step 2: In the Compatibility tab, check the option of Run this program in compatibility mode for: under the Compatibility mode section and choose Previous version of Windows from the drop-down menu.

Step 3: Then you can click on the downloaded file to install the driver.

Method 3: Assign a Drive Letter

Besides, we have mentioned that, sometimes, your Seagate external hard drive not responding is triggered by some software-related mistaken configurations. One possible reason is that the operating system does not assign a drive letter to the new drive or the Seagate drive shares the same drive letter as your existing partition, so you cannot access the Seagate external hard drive.

To fix that, you can change or assign a letter for your Seagate external hard drive.

Step 1: Open the Run dialog box by pressing the Win + R keys and input diskmgmt.msc to enter Disk Management.

Step 2: Please right-click on the external hard drive volume and choose Change Drive Letter and Paths….

Step 3: Click on Change… and check the option of Assign the following drive letter: to choose a drive letter.

Step 4: Click OK to save your changes and check if you have fixed the Seagate external hard drive not responding issue.

Method 4: Reinstall the USB Controller

If the Seagate external hard drive not detected issue is still hassling you, you can try to reinstall the USB controller.

Step 1: Press Win + X and choose Device Manager from the quick menu.

Step 2: Expand Universal Serial Bus controllers and right-click on the Seagate external hard drive controller to uninstall it. After that, you can restart your computer and the system will automatically reinstall it.

Method 5: Turn on the USB Root Hub

Some people reported that they resolve the Seagate external hard drive not working issue by turning on the USB root hub and you can try it!

Step 1: Still, expand Universal Serial Bus controllers in Device Manager and right-click on one of your USB Root Hub to choose Properties.

Step 2: In Power Management, uncheck the option of Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power and click OK to save your choice.

Method 6: Format the External Hard Drive

If your external hard drive can show up but does not respond, you can format the external hard drive by the following steps. But be careful, this move will delete all the data in your drive and you’d better have had a backup for that. If not, try other troubleshooting methods.

Step 1: Enter Disk Management and right-click on the problematic hard drive to choose Format….

Step 2: Choose the options on the screen as you need and tick the option of Perform a quick format. Then click OK.

Repeat the process to other partitions and then reconnect the driver and try it again.

Method 7: Disable Microsoft OneDrive

Since the reason that triggers the Seagate external hard drive not working issue varies between people, we find OneDrive may stop hard drives from being detected, so you can try to disable the program.

Step 1: Click on the OneDrive icon on the system’s stray and choose Help & Settings and then Settings.

Step 2: In Settings, choose the option of Start OneDrive automatically when I sign into Windows, and in Account, click Unlink this PC and click Unlink account to continue the move.

Then check if the issue has been fixed.

Method 8: Disable USB Selective Suspend

The USB Selective Suspend feature is used to save battery by stopping the power supply to unused USB ports. It is possible that your Seagate external hard drive is stopped by this feature and you can disable the feature to check if the Seagate external hard drive still can’t work.

Step 1: Type Control Panel in Search and open it.

Step 2: Change View by: to Large icons and choose Power Options.

Step 3: Choose Change plan settings next to the selected preferred plan and choose Change advanced power settings in the next window.

Step 4: Expand USB settings and then USB selective suspend setting to disable the option. Click Apply and OK to save it.

Method 9: Keep Your OS and Disk Drive Up to Date

As we mentioned before, an outdated operating system and disk drives can be the culprit making you fail to access the Seagate hard drive. Therefore, you can choose to update them.

To update the disk drive, please follow the next steps.

Step 1: Open Device Manager and expand Disk drives.

Step 2: Right-click on the Seagate external hard drive and choose Update driver.

Step 3: Follow the on-screen instructions to finish the process, restart your PC, and try using the external drive again.

To update Windows, you can do as follows.

Step 1: Go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update.

Step 2: Click Check for updates and Windows will automatically check for available ones and download and install it.

Suggestion: Have a Backup Plan for Your Data

If your Seagate external hard drive not working issue is triggered by some mistakenly configured issues, then you can easily fix the issue via the above methods; but if your external hard drive has been damaged physically, the situation will be much more intractable.

The data stored in the Seagate external hard drive won’t come back if you have no backup. You may think a portable hard drive will be a sure card for data storage but one big downside is that it is vulnerable to damage or loss.

In this way, we highly recommend you prepare a backup plan for your important data all the time. MiniTool ShadowMaker – a committed backup program, providing a one-click system backup solution, can help you back up systems, files, folders, partitions, and disks.

To facilitate your backup process, you can also configure it with three types of backup and scheduled settings. You can click the following button to download and install the program for a 30-day free trial.

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Step 1: Open the program and click Keeps Trial.

Step 2: In the Backup tab, choose your backup source and destination and then click Back Up Now or Back Up Later to perform a backup after you make your decision.

This article has given you multiple methods to fix the Seagate external hard drive not working issue. If you like this article and think it is useful, you can share it on Twitter.Click to Tweet

Bottom Line:

People will use Seagate hard drives to store their data and if the Seagate external hard drive not working issue happens for some physical damage, your data will never come back. That’s why we stress the importance of having a backup plan for your important data and MiniTool ShadowMaker can be your better choice.

If you have encountered any issues when using MiniTool ShadowMaker, you can leave a message in the following comment zone and we will reply as soon as possible. If you need any help when using MiniTool software, you may contact us via [email protected].