Often, if a device is not recognised by one port, it will work when plugged into a different port or a different PC. If not, check your EHD manufacturer’s website for a tool that could find and fix your missing drive. The leading examples include WD’s Data Lifeguard Diagnostics and Seagate’s SeaTools for Windows. The major hard drive manufacturers have the most experience in debugging hard drive problems and some have free software to help. See my recent answer to “ Where’s the cheapest place to store 500GB of data online?” Diagnostic software These include Amazon Photos, Apple’s iCloud, Microsoft OneDrive, Google One and third-party services such as pCloud and Mega.NZ. You can back up your photos to thumb drives, SD cards, optical discs (CD, DVD, Blu-ray), external hard drives, a local network server or an online service. Schofield’s Second Law of Computing states that data doesn’t really exist unless you have at least two copies of it.

Ideally, you should have at least three copies of your photos stored on different media and at least one should be kept in a different place.

You should never lose data because an external USB hard drive fails. USB flash drives are useful for creating cheap backups. If you do not have a backup and cannot get the drive to work, it may be worth rolling back to Windows 7 and making a backup before reinstalling Windows 10 – or enlisting the help of a friend who is still running Windows 7. For example, it could be the lack of a suitable driver, a corrupted driver or a conflict with another USB device. However, if you have two devices that use the same type of cable, you can swap them over to see if that solves the problem.Īlternatively, it could be a software problem. External hard drive cables rarely fail unless they get the same sort of abuse. USB cables can fail after prolonged use, though this is more likely to happen to the Micro USB cables used with mobile phones. EHDs that have their own power supplies tend to work more reliably. This can be a problem if the PC’s motherboard does not supply enough power to the USB port you are using or if the drive is plugged into a non-powered hub. Some external hard drives draw their power from the USB port and they may not get enough. The port, the connecting cable, the power supply and the external hard drive (EHD) can all suffer from physical and/or electrical faults.

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