If you have problems fixing external hard drive unknown USB device, please continue to read this article, get the possible reasons and corresponding methods.
“I have a Western Digital external hard drive of 1 TB I installed a 2.0 PCI card when I couldn’t get the device to work. This solved nothing. When I attach the hard drive it brings up a message that says the device is Unknown. I don’t know how to manually fix the problem. I contacted western digital, but being plug and play they do not provide drivers for their products and have referred me to your website.Please help, it’s nothing more than an expensive paperweight at this point.”
External hard drives showing "Unknown" in Device Manager is a common disk error. Of all external disks, USB drives are the most likely to show this error. Here are a collection of possible reasons:
Here we will introduce you to 6 methods and fix external hard disk unknown device step by step. If you don’t know what to do, try the following methods.
Before starting to try the other methods below to solve the external hard disk unknown device error, you can choose to restart your computer and reconnect the device. Sometimes, this problem will disappear.
1. Type device manager in the search box and select it from the results. Then, locate the problematic USB external hard drive.
2. Right-click on the unknown USB device and choose Uninstall device.
3. Once the uninstallation process is complete, unplug the USB drive. Then, wait for approximately one minute and reconnect it. The driver should be loaded automatically. You just need to check if the USB drive shows up in Windows Explorer.
1. Open Device Manager as explained in Way 2.
2. Expand the Universal Serial Bus controllers category, right-click the unknown USB drive and select Uninstall.
3. Restart your computer after the uninstallation process. Your USB controllers will be reinstalled automatically.
1. Type power plan in the search box and select Choose a power plan. Then, click on Change Plan Settings.
2. Click on Change advanced power settings.
3. In the Advanced Setting tab, go to USB Selective Suspend Setting and select Disable. Finally, click Apply > OK to confirm it.
1. Consult your computer's documentation to determine the motherboard manufacturer.
2. Visit the official manufacturer's website, find and install the latest motherboard chipset drivers. Contact the manufacturer for assistance if needed.
If the external hard drive unknown device issue still exists, you can only initialize the disk. Although the process itself does not erase data, its further partitioning and formatting will. So it’s suggested to recover data from USB drive first. Let’s dive into it!
MyRecover is one of the most powerful data recovery software in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7, etc and Windows Server, which can recover data from health, problematic(eg: disk showing as unknown device) or damaged disk. It can be internal or external disk, USB drive, SD card, etc.
1. Install and launch the powerful data recovery software - MyRecover on your Windows PC. Hover the mouse over the drive saved deleted files before, and click Scan.
2. It will run two advanced scanning methods - Quick Scan & Deep Scan automatically and display all the found files on the selected disk. You can filter and preview files on the disk. Here are two methods:
3. Select all the deleted or lost files on the unknown device and click the Recover x files button. You will then be asked to select a location. Please select a new location instead of the original location.
Notes:
Except for recovering data from unknown device, you can also recover data from RAW disk, recover data from not initialized disk, recover files from a formatted hard drive, etc.
After recovering data from unknown device, you will not worry about data loss anymore. You can then initialize disk in Disk Management.
1. Right-click on "This PC" and select "Manage" > "Disk Management".
2. Locate the disk showing “Unknown”, right-click on it, and select "Initialize Disk".
3. In the "Initialize Disk" window, select the MBR or GPT partition style and click "OK" to proceed.
You can easily fix an external hard drive unknown device with the possible reasons and corresponding solutions. Try 5 common methods first. If your problem still exists, try to recover data and initialize disk.
In addition, if you don’t want to lose any data on external hard drive, the best practice is to backup files on external hard drive or the entire disk automatically. Try free backup software for Windows - AOMEI Backupper Standard!