Jan 16, 2020 When you want to open an external hard drive, Windows prompts you to format the disk before you can use it, or access is denied. Solution 1: Use a Different USB Port. When you search external hard drive keeps disconnecting issue on the internet, you can find some users say that this problem is solved by changing the USB 3.0 port to USB 2.0 port.
If your mac book/ pc port or external drive is damaged, your Mac will not identify the external hard drive. And you will get the same dialogue on-screen as I showed above. You must have to check the Mac to recognize the external hard drive through the following steps: Step 1: Click on the apple icon on the upper-left corner of your screen.
Sep 10, 2017 It could be that your external drive is drawing too much power and is overtaxing the power supply. When that happens the drive slows slightly and then has to repeat and repeat the write operations in the copy, which takes longer than normal. The OS then thinks that the drive has disconnected because the drive has not responded to the write request.

External Hard Drive Disconnecting
External Dvd Drive Keeps Disconnecting
Why Does My External Drive Keep Disconnecting

I am using El Capitan (latest version) on a Mac Mini and have setup a shared drive to my Synology NAS. The connection uses SMB (have also tried AFP). Problem: after a period of time (hours / days) the network share will disappear. I need to do a restore for Windows 12 server virtual from a backup on an external drive. The base system is running OS X Sierra. While doing the restore, the drive just reconnects to Mac and remounts the NTFS partition and kills the bare metal restore. I have updated to the latest version. I have tried different hard drive to USB adapters.

Summary: It is rather annoying that an external hard drive keeps disconnecting and reconnecting when you copy, back up, or transfer files on Windows/Mac computers. Don't know how to fix this issue? Read this post to stop external hard drives from ejecting by itself and to recover lost data from external hard drives with iBoysoft Data Recovery.

Table of contents: 1. Why your external hard drive keeps disconnecting?; 2. How to recover lost data from the corrupted/unrecognized external hard drives?; 3. My external hard drive keeps disconnecting, how to fix?

Just picture this, you are trying to copy some important files from a WD my passport external hard drive, but the USB drive keeps disconnecting and reconnecting on the computer all the time. You need to use these files in tomorrow's conference but all the efforts you've done were in vain. You can't copy, transfer, or back up these files on this drive at all because it is always interrupted by disconnection. Annoying, right?

Indeed, you're not the first one who meet this problem, and here is a case from one of our users.

Hi. I'm having a bit of disk problem here. My external hard drive (Seagate 1TB) keeps disconnecting. When I plug my hard drive into my Windows 10 computer, this external hard drive is detected, but after 5 seconds or so, it starts disconnecting and reconnecting every second. After a while, I get the prompt 'You need to format the disk in drive D: before you can use it'. I am not going to format this drive as I have many important files on it, so I unplug the drive, which didn't fix this problem. Now, I am at loss. Can you help me? Thanks in advance.

It's commonplace for Windows and Mac users, whether you're using WD, Seagate, Lacie, or any other external hard drive. Hence, this article provides 6 solutions to stop external hard drives from disconnecting, and how to recover your data from this external hard drive in this case.

But before you check these solutions, why not catch a glimpse of the causes for this issue?

Why your external hard drive keeps disconnecting?

An external hard drive is connected to a computer through the USB cable/Thunderbolt and port. As you can see, reading a USB hard drive on the computer involves three parts at least - the external hard drive itself, the USB cable, and the USB port. Thus, it is hard to tell which part goes wrong when the hard drive constantly disconnects and reconnects. Generally speaking, the related factors could be:

The external hard drive is corrupted due to unsafe ejection, bad sectors, virus infection, etc.
The USB cable is broken or aging.
The USB port is wobbly or damaged.
The USB 3.0 driver is outdated or incompatible.
The USB hub is not supplied with enough power.

Compared with external hard drive not showing up, this 'randomly disconnecting' issue is worse as it could make your external hard drive dead completely. You will not be able to open this drive nor access files on this drive at that time. So, no matter what the reason is, you need to recover your files from this drive as soon as possible, and stop the external hard drive from disconnecting and reconnecting right now!

How to recover lost data from the corrupted/unrecognized external hard drives?

When an external hard drive is showing up but later disappears/disconnects randomly, the most urgent thing, in this case, is to recover lost data from this external hard drive as soon as possible. Because constant disconnection and reconnection will damage your external hard drive and make this hard drive inaccessible possibly. So, you'd better recover your files from this external hard drive in no time before the 'disconnecting' thing destroys your drive completely someday.

Then, how can you recover lost data from the hard drive in this case? Actually, all you need is professional hard drive data recovery software. for example, iBoysoft Data Recovery.

iBoysoft Data Recovery is a professional file recovery tool. It can recover photos, documents, emails, etc. when an external hard drive keeps disconnecting and the drive becomes corrupted. Moreover, this free data recovery software can recover lost data from formatted, inaccessible, corrupted, RAW, unreadable, unmountable external hard drives. With this useful program, hard drive data recovery and SD card data recovery, as well as USB flash drives and CF card recovery, etc. are possible for both Mac and Windows users.

Supported Windows operating system: Windows 10/8/7/Vista/XP and Windows Server 2019/2016/2012/2008/2003

Supported Mac operating system: macOS Catalina (10.15), macOS 10.14 (Mojave), macOS 10.13 (High Sierra), macOS 10.12 (Sierra) and Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan), 10.10 (Yosemite), 10.9 (Mavericks), 10.8 (Mountain Lion), 10.7 (Lion)

Take windows computer as an example to recover lost data form external hard drives here:

Tutorial to recover lost data from external hard drives

Step 1: Download iBoysoft Data Recovery on your Windows computer and launch it.

Step 2: Select your external hard drive in the list and click 'Next' to scan for files on this drive.

Step 3: The scanning results will be listed in the left sidebar. Select the files you want to recover and preview if you want to check if it is intact.

Step 4: Click 'Recover' to get your files back.

Note: If your external hard drive keeps disconnecting and reconnecting on a Mac computer and you need to recover lost data from this drive, you can download iBoysoft Data Recovery for Mac to get your files back as well.

My external hard drive keeps disconnecting, how to fix?

After recovering files from this external hard drive, you can go ahead to fix this 'disconnection' problem with ease. There are 6 solutions you can make an attempt.

Solution 1:Check the connections - the USB hub and cable

It may sound ridiculous and foolish, but actually, checking the connection does work for many users whose external hard disk keeps disconnecting on the computer just like yours. So why not give it a try since it is as easy as pie?

Re-insert this external hard drive into your computer.
Plug this external hard drive to another USB port.
Use another USB cable to connect this device to the computer.

These steps didn't fix your disk problems? No worries, you still have other options to have a bash.

Solution 2:Update the USB driver

If the external hard drive keeps disconnecting during files copying, or the hard drive is not working on computer normally, you might be experiencing one of the USB 3.0 controller driver problems listed below:

The USB driver is outdated and a

Mac Os X External Drive Keeps Disconnecting