Seagate external hard drive not showing up in finder..

Question

I have a seagate powered Hard Drive with USB 3.0, I plug it into my new surface pro 3. And the hard drive is no where to be seen. Am I the only one with this issue ? Should I return the surface pro for a MacBook Air if this is going to be my experience right out the box? Concerned already and it's only been 4 days not happy...

Answer 1

well I tried it and I still can't see my drive! Same problem, seagate usb 3 drive, plug it in and I get no love. The drive turns on and I can hear it going, but it just won't show up. 

thanks for any help!

~mike

Answer 2

I noticed in the title of your post you say "finder", I presume as in the Macintosh Finder?  You do know that your hard drive will not appear on the Windows Desktop, as on a Mac?  Instead, if it has mounted correctly, you should see it show up in the "Devices and drives" section under "This PC" in File Explorer. (Be aware that if the disk is already formatted as an HTFS volume for the Mac, it won't necessarily show up in Windows.)

If it is not appearing there, it could be because the disk has not yet been initialized. Or, it could be a problem with the device is causing it not to be recognized correctly.  If it is the former issue, you can use the Windows Disk Management tool to initialize and format the disk if necessary (obviously, this can destroy data, so be sure you know what you are doing).  To check on the later issue, you can use Windows Device Manager to see if a USB device is experiencing a problem.  (If you don't know how to find these tools, the fastest way is to open the Desktop Control Panel and just type their names in the search box.)

I think Clare_Hs's reply to your original post has some useful ideas and information to try.

Answer 3

Hi there, 

Are you able to use your external hard drive now?

What steps have you tried? 

Let us know. We are happy to help. 

Thanks,

Clare

Answer 4

Hi Jusblz07

Welcome to the community and thank you for bringing this question to us. We understand that you are having external hard drive connecting issues. We are here to help. 

We would like to know your situation better to provide a better solution.

• Do you have all updates? You can go to Charms>Settings>Change PC settings>Update and Recovery> Windows Update> Check now.  You can also check here to see if you have all updates.
• Is your external hard drive designed for Windows or Mac? Does it work on other Windows 8 devices?
• Have your reformat the drive in NTFS ? you might find this link helpful

We are looking forward to your reply. 

Best Wishes,

Clare