Hello all,

I have a problem with my external hard disk. It is a 1TB Buffalo ministation USB 3.0 Harddisk. It is being detected by the devices manager (as HDPCTU3), but it is not shown in the windows explorer and I am unable to acces any data stored in the disk. The hard disk is on and hard disk light stays constantly on as long as it is plugged in.

Is there any way to solve this problem?

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In Device Manager, Disk Management, do you see the disk listed there, possibly as a "foreign disk". If so, you simply need to import the disk.

Along with that, do you know what filesystem is on the disk? Was it created with Windows, on a MAC, Linux?

You've not told us which version of Windows you have.

This problem can sometimes fix 'itself' when you turn off the computer, disconnect the external drive and turn on the computer again. When the computer is on and 'settled' then connect the external drive. This measure has an 80 percent success rate, or less. :-)

The device is listed in the device manager but not as any foreign device. It is listed along with the internal hard drives in the system.

It was created with Windows. I have Windows 7 Home Premium on my System.

I have tried to access the external hard disk on other systems too. But the same problem persists. The disk is listed in the device manager and in "devices and printers", but I am unable to access the data in the disk through the windows explorer

Look at Disk Management, in the Computer Management console. Right click My Computer --> Manage.

Two ports...Thunderbolt and USB 3 only works when one is pluged in.

the problem the software in this disk will be gone if the disk formated

If you are accessing your hdd with NTFS partition on OS with FAT, you will find problem. You might have not installed drivers of the hdd - check ou device manager. I also had the same issue. The drivers were not properly installed. finally, it started working when I installed required drivers.

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