Solution: Unable to Open External Hard Drive or Files/Folders

Scenario 1: External hard drive won't open

Sometimes, you may not be able to open an external hard drive even if it is correctly connected to the computer system and recognized properly.

We've gathered the most common errors related to an unopenable hard drive and tested the corresponding solutions. Among the frequent ones are:

• X: Drive is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?
• You need to format X: drive before using it.
• Access denied to X: drive.
• X: drive is inaccessible. The file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.
• X: drive appears as xxGB RAW format in Disk Management and cannot be opened properly.

Aside from these direct error messages, there can be vague reasons behind a hard drive not opening, such as a virus infection or a specific system configuration, which require trying multiple methods to check, diagnose, and ultimately solve the issue.

How to recover data from an external hard drive that won't open

Before you proceed with troubleshooting, take one more step. Do you have important data that needs to be recovered? To retrieve files from an inaccessible HDD, external HDD, USB flash drive, or memory card, you can use the Data Recovery Wizard tool.

External Hard Drive Recovery Software Tool

When you encounter an inaccessible, unreadable or unopenable hard drive, data recovery is priority number one. You can install the demo version offered on this page to evaluate the features, speed and efficiency of the Data Recovery Wizard Pro tool before purchasing.

Step 1. Connect your external hard drive to the computer with a functional USB cable. Launch tools Data Recovery Wizard and you'll see your external hard drive listed under "External Devices". This software supports all major external hard drive brands, including WD, Seagate, Toshiba, LaCie, SanDisk, Samsung, etc.

Select your external hard drive, then click the “Scan” button.

< strong > Step 2: As the scan progresses, the software will find more and more lost and deleted data, displaying it in the scanning results. The recovered data is well organized. You can quickly locate your target file/folder by file type, or search for it by exact filename in the search box.

Step 3: Preview the files found by the data recovery wizard scanning algorithm. Select the files you wish to recover and click 'Recover'. To avoid overwriting data, it is recommended that you save the recovered data on a different drive than your original Seagate hard disk.

You can also watch this video tutorial to learn how to fix an inaccessible hard drive.

Fix 1: Format External Hard Drive

After retrieving your data, you can format the external hard drive directly; if you can't open it in Windows, it's likely damaged, and this will save you time and hassle trying a range of other potential solutions suggested online.

You can format a hard drive using cmd, Disk Management, or a third-party hard drive formatting tool. To skip the step of downloading and installing software, we'll use Disk Management in Windows as an example.

Step 1. Press Windows key + R to open the Run box, type diskmgmt.msc, and hit Enter.

Step 2. In Disk Management, you can view the current status of your external hard drive. If it is listed as RAW or Unallocated, right-click on the drive and select "Format..."

Step 3. Select a file system such as NTFS, then click OK.

To give you a sense of how this works, consider three examples where it could make a difference:

Scenario 1: External hard drive won't open and chkdsk won't run

"My 500 GB external hard drive is showing up on my computer but I can't open it when I try to access it. I then tried to use chkdsk to check for errors but it didn't work. Any solutions?"

Scenario 2: The external hard drive is detected but cannot be read or is not showing up in My Computer

"My 80GB USB hard drive has recently disappeared from the 'My Computer' folder. How can I access it and my data?"

CASE 3: I can't access my external hard drive and it prompts me to format it.

"My external hard drive won't open. It prompts me to format it. On my computer, it only displays Local Disk K, but doesn't show the storage capacity."

Fix 2: Repair I/O errors with Check Disk Utility

When your hard drive is recognized but fails to open with the error message “The disk cannot be accessed due to an I/O device error,” you can resolve this issue by running CHKDSK or changing the transfer mode of the drive in IDE channel properties.

For a detailed guide, refer to the article on How to Fix an I/O Device Error on External Hard Drive.How to Fix an I/O Device Error on External Hard Drive.

"Drive cannot be accessed, I/O device error"

Fix 3: Request admin privileges

If you don't have administrative privileges to access an external hard drive, it won't open, and you'll typically see an error message that reads, "Drive is not accessible. Access is denied." To fix this, you need to take ownership to gain permissions. Here's how:

Step 1: Right-click the inaccessible hard drive and select “Properties.”

< strong > Step 2. Go to the Security tab, switch to Advanced, and click Edit. On the Owner tab, change the ownership to the account in question.

Scenario 2: Unable to Open Files from External Hard Drive

As we delve deeper into the issue of an external hard drive not opening, it's worth mentioning that the problem can take a more severe turn. There is another category of users who report that while they can access the disk drive normally, the files and folders within remain inaccessible. The inability to open crucial data is particularly devastating for organizations that should rely on reliable project management software to ensure uninterrupted access to business resources.

In this case, you won't be able to use the data recovery wizard as suggested above, because it's not guaranteed to succeed. The good news is that we've already covered how to fix an inaccessible file, and I'll link to that article for your reference.

Scenario 1. You plug in an external hard drive and try to open a folder on it, only to receive an error saying "This folder is empty."

Scenario 2: You try to open a file in Windows and get a warning that says, “The system cannot find the file specified.”