[Solved] Toshiba Hard Drive Not Working

Why can I not see my Toshiba external hard drive?

Are you wondering why your Toshiba external hard drive not working? Well, there are several common reasons listed below:

• ✤Inadequate power supply
• ✤Outdated drives
• ✤Viruses and malware
• ✤Absence of the drive letter
• ✤Dead of the USB port
• ✤...

You can discover the appropriate solution to any problems you may be having in this post.

Solutions to Toshiba hard drive not working

In this post, we offer you several methods for external hard drive not working.

Option 1. Check the Toshiba hard drive connection

Many times, the errors that occur on your computer are due to the poor connection between your hard drive and system. When you notice your hard drive missing, you should first try the following methods to check the connection.

• Verify the connection between your Toshiba hard drive and another PC.
• Connect your Toshiba hard drive using the new cable.
• Switch the USB port where the hard drive is connected.
• If possible, connect the hard drive to your computer using an original cable.

Option 2. Reassign a drive letter to missing Toshiba hard drive

A conflict that prevents certain drives from accessing may happen each time you connect the Toshiba hard drive to your computer. In this case, changing the drive letter could fix the problem.

Step 1. To open Disk Management, press Win + R and type in “diskmgmt.msc”, and then click OK.

Step 2. Right-click the volume on your external hard drive and click Change Drive Letter and Paths.

Step 3. Click Add to open the Add Drive Letter or Path. 

Step 4. Then choose Assign the following drive letter and select a drive letter to your hard drive, and then click OK.

Option 3. Use free software to restore Toshiba hard drive

If you've tried the aforementioned ways and your Toshiba hard drive is still not visible, you can use this AOMEI Partition Assistant software to quickly and securely restore your disk. To help you understand this application better, the main advantages are listed.

Easy-to-use. It has an intuitive interface and no IT experience is required to recover lost partition.

Compatible. Everyone is available to recover multiple types of partitions in Windows 11/10/8/7. For example, you can recover NTFS partitions, and you can also recover FAT partitions or Ext2/Ext3/Ext4 partitions.

Effective. It will scan and locate your missing partition in seconds so that you can fast recover the partition completely.

Step 1. Install and launch the software. On the left panel, click Partition Recovery Wizard, then locate your target disk and click Next.

Step 2. We recommend you to use Fast Search to scan your missing disk quickly, and then click Next.

Step 3. Choose the missing drive you want to recover and then click Proceed to start the process.

Step 4. Then you will see a Congratulations message, which means you have successfully recovered your external hard drive.

Option 4. Update the external hard drive

An outdated hard drive will cause some problems while using the computer. If your Toshiba hard drive is still not working, try to update the device driver.

Step 1. Right-click on Start and then click Device Manager > Disk Drives. Right-click on your target drive and select Update driver in the context menu.

Step 2. Click Search automatically for drivers, then your computer will automatically search for the best available driver and install it.

Option 5. Reinstall the USB controllers

If you have switched the USB port but nothing changed, you can follow the next steps to reinstall the USB controllers to solve this problem.

Step 1. Open Device Manager and then double click Universal Serial Bus controllers.

Step 2. Right-click your hard drive controller and then click Uninstall device, click Uninstall again when asked.

Option 6. Use Windows troubleshooting functionality

PowerShell is a Windows built-in feature and you also can use it to solve your problem by the following steps.

Step 1. Right-click Start and click Windows PowerShell > Run as Administrator, then click Yes if prompted.

Step 2. Type in “msdt.exe -id DeviceDiagnostic” and then press Enter.

Step 3. Click Next and follow the presented instructions based on the problems that windows discovered.

Bonus Tip: How to recover the missing files in Toshiba hard drive

If you successfully open your disk on your computer but find the external hard drive files not showing up. Don’t worry, here comes the solutions.

Option 1. Restore accidentally deleted files from Recycle Bin

Each time you can’t find the files, you should first go to the Recycle Bin to check whether you accidentally deleted them. If you do, you can directly recover files recently deleted from Recycle Bin.

Step 1. Double-click Recycle Bin to open it on your desktop.

Step 2. Locate the deleted file you want to recover.

Step 3. Right-click the file and click Restore in the context menu, then the file will back to its original location.

Option 2. Show hidden files on Toshiba hard drive

If your missing files are not in the Recycle Bin, they may be hidden in the computer. Follow the next steps to find hidden files with ease.

Step 1. Right-click Start button and then click File Explorer.

Step 2. Locate your hard drive and then click View > Options.

Step 3. In the View interface, tick Show hidden files, folders, and drives, and then click Apply > OK.

Option 3. Recover the lost files using data recovery software

You can also use data recovery software to retrieve your files effectively and safely. AOMEI Data Recovery is a professional data recovery software that provides you with wide solutions to recover deleted files in all situations.

Step 1. Connect your Toshiba external hard drive to your computer, launch the software, hover the mouse over  the hard drive you want to recover your data from, and then click Scan.

Step 2. The software will quickly and completely scan your drive. Next, a list of the missing and removed files will appear. By entering the file name into the search box in the top right corner, you can do a direct file search.

Step 3. Select the files you wish to recover, and then click Recover x files to get them back.

The bottom line

Many errors may cause Toshiba hard drive not working, no matter what situation you are faced with, hope this post can solve your problem. If you don’t want to download any third-party software, you can try the Windows built-in features to fix the issues. But if you don’t want to cause extra errors, we recommend you to use professional software.