Inaccessible Toshiba External Drive?

Beeeyeee · December 4, 2017

its a 1TB USB 3.0 external drive which was disconnected from a mac without "safe ejecting" and now it seems inaccessible.

I went into the Disk management in windows and it sees the drive and its partitions. but I can't seem to access the drive no matter what I do! any suggestions?

seanbisepic · December 4, 2017

If on Windows:
Open up Command Prompt, type

wmic diskdrive get status

You should get an OK for each drive on your system.

Follow that by running chkdsk, reference on how to use chkdsk: https://neosmart.net/wiki/chkdsk/

If on Mac:
Run First Aid on the drive on Mac, both on the Volume and Drive itself if possible.

You may want to use disk recovery tools if possible, try SMART testing applications if possible. I use Hard Drive Sentinel personally to check SMART status and run tests.

You could try leaving the drive plugged in overnight, just in case the drive is attempting internal recovery as well.

Beeeyeee · December 4, 2017

11 minutes ago, seanbisepic said:
If on Windows:
Open up Command Prompt, type
wmic diskdrive get status
You should get an OK for each drive on your system.

Follow that by running chkdsk, reference on how to use chkdsk: https://neosmart.net/wiki/chkdsk/

If on Mac:
Run First Aid on the drive on Mac, both on the Volume and Drive itself if possible.

You may want to use disk recovery tools if possible, try SMART testing applications if possible. I use Hard Drive Sentinel personally to check SMART status and run tests.

You could try leaving the drive plugged in overnight, just in case the drive is attempting internal recovery as well.

wmic command gives ok on 6 drives. that is the correct number of disks, but one has a partition, does that affect the number of drives? if so, its not even seeing the drive. if not we're good.

secondly I tried to run chkdsk but the drive does not have a letter... see screenshot. (its disk 5)