It's A Digital Disease!

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External HDD not showing up in File Explorer, but detected by system – Need help recovering old data (zerobytes.monster)

submitted 2 months ago by bOt@zerobytes.monster to c/datahoarder@zerobytes.monster

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The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/yush-pb on 2025-06-11 13:29:46.

Hey everyone,

I had an old laptop that I recently upgraded by installing a new SSD. I removed the old HDD from that laptop and placed it in a USB enclosure so I could use it as an external drive and access my previous data.

When I connect the enclosure to my current system, Windows does detect it as a mass storage device (I can see it in Device Manager and "Safely Remove Hardware"), but nothing shows up under This PC / File Explorer — no drive letter, no access to files.

I don’t want to format the drive, since it has important data I need to recover.

Has anyone faced this issue before? What steps should I take to safely access or recover the data from this drive?

Thanks in advance!

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