Forum Discussion
External hard drive not recognized after Windows 11 update
I have a relatively new external hard drive (HDD, plugged into a SATA dock converting into USB 3.0) that has been running with no problems on my laptop for the past 3 months. Recently I updated to Windows 11 from 10, and the drive continues to operate as normal, but after a very recent update in December (I think it was KB5072033) at times the drive would randomly fail to get recognized and behave as if it was disconnected. To be more precise, unplugging and replugging the USB cable from the dock into the laptop would not cause anything to happen - the drive doesn't get recognized at all, and this happens on all available USB ports. On the other hand, switching off the dock's power button and turning it back on (while having the USB cable connected at all times) would, in rare occasions, enable the drive to be recognized. The system plays the USB plugged in sound and the drive appears once again in Explorer, but after a few seconds the disconnection sound would play as the drive disappears, despite the power and USB connection being maintained. In some extremely rare cases, the drive would remain connected for longer, but even then it may suddenly get disconnected in the middle of usage.
I'm quite confused as this is a new hard drive and dock that has been working reliably until very recently. Furthermore, the inconsistency in the drive getting recognized or not upon restarting the dock's power is also confusing. As such, I'd like to have some insight about this problem. Thank you.
2 Replies
Your issue with the external hard drive not being consistently recognized after the Windows 11 update, particularly around KB5072033, sounds like a driver or power management problem, especially given the behavior of the dock and the drive.
Can you elaborate on what do you mean by power management? For the record the dock runs on its own AC adapter independent of the laptop (it doesn't have any interfaces for control), and power supply was consistent throughout. Also I've tried uninstalling KB5072033 but the inconsistency still remained, so could this be more of a problem with the dock's quality than anything else?
