Fix Hard Drive Won't Power Up/Turn on Without Data Loss

Are you experiencing the external hard drive not powering up issue? Start to be aware then. It's time to find solutions here to fix this problem of the external hard drive not turning on or powering up normally, and try to rescue data as much as possible with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.

Warning: external hard drive not powering up!

When the hard drive won't power up, the computer won't turn on. In this case, people tend to face various unpleasant situations. For example:

• Data loss
• Overheating hard drive
• Hard drive not spinning, light blinking
• Critical system failure

4 methods to fix external hard drive won't power up

In this part, you're going to check, determine, and choose workarounds that work the best for your own case. Now you need to take action to manually check hard drive symptoms and do some manual fix. 

Method 1. Change power cable

Step 1: Check the power cable on your computer. Ensure that the external hard drive or internal hard drive is plugged in stiffly on your PC.

Step 2: If not, switch the cable or remove the hard drive to another PC to see if it powers up or not. 

Step 3: If the hard drive or external hard drive powers up and shows up on your PC or the new computer, you'll need to change a new hard drive cable on your computer. 

Method 2. Update hard drive drivers

You can first update the hard drive drivers in Device Manager on your computer with the below tips.

Step 1: In Windows 10/8.1/8/7, press Windows + R keys to bring up the Run box, type devmgmt.msc and hit Enter.

Step 2: In Device Manager, right-click on the hard drive which won't power up and select "Properties".

Step 3: Switch to the "Driver" tab, click on "Update Driver", and proceed with "Search automatically for updated driver software". 

Then check out whether your external hard drive or internal hard drive spins up or not. If not, just follow to fix hard drive fails to spin up error without losing any data by referring to the second part.

Method 3: Enable hard drive/external hard drive in BIOS

Step 1. Keep your hard drive or the external hard drive connected to your PC, and restart your computer.

Step 2. Hold and long-press F2 to enter BIOS.

Step 3. Enter Setup and check the system documentation to see if the hard drive is Off or not. If it is Off, turn it ON in System Setup.

Step 4. Reboot PC to see if your hard drive powers up and comes back now.

Usually, after doing this, your hard drive should be able to boot up and show up on your PC again.

Method 4. Send it to repair

We suggest you take the hard drive to a local disk repair center for a physical diagnostic. Some hardware maintenance center provides manual data recovery service.

How to access data from not powering hard drive

If the hard drive keeps disconnecting or disappearing on your computer, something must go wrong with it. If you are under this issue, to keep your precious data safely, we'd like to recommend you clone failing/failed hard drive to the new disk or external storage device.

If you cannot access or find no tracks of your hard drive data on your PC, don’t worry. Powerful hard drive data recovery software can easily help you find your lost data within three simple steps. You can apply EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard to find your lost hard drive data with ease:

Step 1. Launch EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard in Windows 11/10/8/7 and choose the place where you lost data. Then, click "Scan".

Step 2. After the scan, use the file format filter on the left or upper right corner to find the files you need. Then, you can click the "Preview" button or double-click a file to preview its content.

Step 3. Click the checkbox next to the file and click "Recover" to get back the lost data to a secure place.