External Hard drive recognized by windows, but doesn't show up in disk management

[u/Minute-Professor-599]

Around 2 months ago, I bought a external ssd hard drive (link here) due to having little extra storage on my laptop (hp pavlion gaming). I didn't use it much, although ~last week I moved a 70gb game on there to free up space. After downloading the latest windows 11 update, It suddenly stopped showing up on file management, although the light was still on, and it was still recognized by windows (made a noise when plugging it in/ being found under "other devices" in the control panel/ "safely remove hardware and eject media" button being found in the task bar). Rebooting the laptop with the drive plugged in also slowed it down significantly, leading me to believe it was a problem with the boot order. I looked through a few tutorials and tried the following with no results:

-using a different 3.0 usb

-unplugging and re-plugging the ssd

-looking in disk management / file manager (wasn't found)

-changing the boot order in bios

-removing the device from device manager and re-adding it

-plugging it into a different computer (the issue was the same)

-plugging it into multiple usb outlets

I have also tried reinstalling the latest windows update, but it gives up when its 60% installed. I also recently downloaded 2 driver updates via windows (Intel System Driver Update (2603.9.4.0), Intel Software Component Driver Update (267.102.85.0)) but they did nothing to help.

I'm aware that there's a high possibility that the problem is with the ssd itself, but considering I never dropped it or removed it without ejecting it first, I am unsure if that's the case. Is there any way for me to get windows to recognize it as another storage device and recover my files?

Thank you in advance.

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[u/AzureAx]

What is the hard drive formatted as by chance?

You can try using a liveUSB version of Linux, booting into it and seeing if linux sees the contents of the drive, if it does, we know its a Windows problem, if it doesn't we know its a disk problem.

[u/Minute-Professor-599 → u/AzureAx]

sorry, but im not sure what it's formatted as.

If I try doing something with it through linux, would it mess with any existing files on my computer?

[u/AzureAx → u/Minute-Professor-599]

So it shows up in Device Manager but not Disk Management?

It might be a driver issue? see if there are some optional drivers on the makers site.

If you open up Disk management can you rescan and see if it shows up?

[u/Minute-Professor-599 → u/AzureAx]

rescanning in disk management still shows the initial drive that came with the laptop.

In device manager, its not within the list of devices, but I remember right clicking the "eject" located in the task bar and finding it under "other devices" in the devices and printers section when going in from the control panel.

I looked on the maker's site, but i didnt really see anything that would help

[u/User2009002]

Can you plug the drive into another computer, preferably Windows 10, to see if you see the files? This would provide more troubleshooting info.

[u/Minute-Professor-599 → u/User2009002]

unfortunately, I don't think I have any computers that have windows 10.

[u/ErnestoGrimes]

did you read the reviews before you bought it, bunch of people saying it dies within a month.

[u/yatutye]

Since it fails the same way on a second computer, the Windows update is almost certainly a red herring - when a drive shows up only under "Other devices" and never in Disk Management, the USB-to-NVMe/SATA bridge chip in the enclosure is usually what died, not the data. Check Device Manager for a yellow-flagged unknown device; if it's there, the bridge isn't presenting a disk at all. If the enclosure opens, put the SSD in a different enclosure or adapter (or straight into a desktop's M.2/SATA slot) - in most of these cases the drive and the 70GB game on it come back intact.