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Here is a step-by-step instruction that will help you resolve the Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive not showing issue in Windows' "My Computer" folder. If the data on the unrecognized Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive is valuable, we advise you to try remedies first to make it appear in Disk Management before going one step further to recover the data by employing the Do Your Data Recovery.

fix Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive not showing up

Why is the Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive not showing up on My Computer?

The Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive is a standard portable storage device that works well and has a positive reputation among computer users. When cloning your internal disk, you can use a Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive as the destination disk or back up essential data.

Most of the time, Windows File Explorer may be used to access the Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive. It's possible, nevertheless, that your Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive won't appear on My Computer.

Even after verifying a good connection, our PC occasionally fails to identify the Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive or refuses to do so. The following factors are primarily to blame for the issue:

  • Not initialized.
  • Outdated or corrupted device driver.
  • Does not have a drive letter.
  • Corrupted MBR.
  • Damaged USB port.
  • Incompatible file system.

Fix Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive not showing up in My Computer

The last paragraph provided a list of potential causes for the Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive’s failure to appear in File Explorer. Therefore, you can try one or more of these typical repairs if the Seagate external hard drive is shown in Disk Management but not in Windows 7/8/10/11 File Explorer.

Fix 1: Fix the Built-In System Drivers

It’s possible that the connection is being broken up by corrupted drivers or drivers that need to be updated. If a Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive is detected but not visible, pending upgrades may be to blame. As soon as you can, update the device drivers.

Step 1: Launch Device Manager and choose the driver category. We will select the Universal Serial Bus Controller category because we are attempting to connect a Seagate hard drive to a computer.

Step 2: Right-click on the driver to access the "Update Driver" option. To update the driver, click it. If there isn't an update option in Device Manager, you can find the driver on the website of the device's maker.

The likelihood that the driver will be updated improves.

Fix 2: Reinstall USB controllers

Reinstalling the USB controllers is one of the best fixes for a Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive that won't display on the computer. It implies that you must uninstall and reinstall it after disabling the controllers in Device Manager. The controllers will then be able to restore the port's functionality.

Step 1: Open Device Manager by selecting Start > Run > typing devmgmt.msc and press Enter.

Step 2. Expand the Universal Serial Bus Controllers and perform a right-click on the USB. Remove the USB drive by selecting the Uninstall option.

Restart your computer, then reinstall the USB controllers after the hardware adjustments have stabilized. Hopefully, the computer will identify the hard disk, allowing you to view the saved data.

Fix 3: Change a USB port

If the computer does not recognize the Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive, you should first try a different USB port. Verify that the cable is properly plugged in and that neither the port nor the cable has a defect. Try a different port and buy a new cable to determine whether the hard disk is recognized.

If you're lucky, switching USB devices might be the only thing you need to do to get the disk recognized.

Fix 5: Recover data from the Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive

You must format your hard disk to solve the issue if your Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive displays as RAW or unallocated. We advise you to restore the data to another secure location because formatting the hard drive will destroy all of your data. You can attempt Do Your Data Recovery to perform data recovery. Even if the disk won't open on your computer, it works great for recovering data from external hard drives.

Do Your Data Recovery

To safeguard your data, download the Do Your Data Recovery now and adhere to the instructions below.

Step 1. Connect your Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive to your computer using the proper USB connector. When you launch the Do Your Data Recovery, your external disk will appear on the main interface.

This software supports all of the well-known external disk manufacturers, such as WD, Seagate, Toshiba, LaCie, SanDisk, and Samsung.

After selecting, select the external hard disk and press "Scan."

Recover Lost Data from Damaged SSD

Step 2. The software will begin to uncover more and more lost and deleted data as soon as the scanning process is underway, and it will show the data in the scan results. The data that is recovered will be neatly organized. You can use the search box to enter an exact file name to find the desired files or directories quickly.

Recover Lost Data from Damaged SSD

Step 3. The files discovered by the scanning methods of Do Your Data Recovery can be previewed. Then click "Recover" after choosing your files. We advise you to store the recovered data on a disk other than the original Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive to prevent data overwriting.

Recover Lost Data from Damaged SSD

Fix 6: Reformat and Partition Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive

You can partition and reformat the disk after Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive recovery to initialize the disk and make it appear on your computer. The specific steps to formatting a Seagate external hard disk are listed below.

Step 1. The disk partition you need to format can be found on This PC > Manage > Disk Management, right-clicking it and selecting Format.

Step 2. You can choose the file system and cluster size in the pop-up window; after doing so, click OK.

Conclusion:

You now know several fixes you can try if your Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive is not identified by Windows PC. Furthermore, you can always get assistance from the Data Recovery tool if you accidentally lose the complex drive data. Therefore, you won't lose your important files again because of unintentional errors.

That concludes our discussion of the Seagate external hard drive not showing up issue. Utilize the advice we provide to begin resolving your issue right away.

Note: If you will sell your Seagate Backup Plus portable hard drive, just try DoYourData Super Eraser to permanently wipe all sensitive data to prevent potential data recovery and fix logical errors.

DoYourData Author

Written & Updated by Nancy

Nancy works as a tech columnist at DoYourData. She is familiar with macOS and Windows OS and writes computer solution, data recovery, disk clone, data erasure articles for DoYourData. She is a big fan of Mac products and is fond of testing utilities software (such as cleaner, recovery, eraser, NTFS for Mac, video editor, etc) on Mac.

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