Buffalo USB 25gb external hard drive

Hmm, go to Start, Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Disk Management. Then look or scroll down right hand panel to find your disk. If it is there you could RIGHT click on it and assign a new drive letter such as Q or R.
If it's not there your external disk could be faulty, the power supply transformer or power cable could be faulty or it could be the USB cable.
If all looks OK you probably need to contact a disk recovery specialist such as DATA365.

Comment: NTFS is a much more stable file system and is much easier to recover after errors. FAT32 is not commonly used now.

You should try mounting the hard disk internally since any external HDD is actually a normal HDD in a SATA to USB enclosure. If that doesn't work , you should try finding recovery experts in your area but that might be expensive!

A USB hard drive is a portable external storage device that works just like a conventional hard drive. The device is simply plugged into a USB port on your computer as you would connect a flash drive. Unlike a flash drive, however, a USB hard drive can store a much larger amount of data. If your computer will not recognize your USB hard drive, you can try troubleshooting steps to resolve the problem.

Plug one end of the USB cable into the port on your hard drive and plug the other end into the USB port of your computer. Ensure that both ends of the cable are connected securely. Open "My Computer" (Windows XP) or "Computer" (Windows Vista/7). The USB device should be listed as "removable disk" once it is plugged into the computer. If it is not listed among the available drives on your computer, proceed to the next step. Ensure that the data cable is working properly. Sometimes they become faulty due to overstretching age or heavy objects sitting on top of them. Try another USB cable if you have one available. Disconnect all other USB devices from the computer as they may interfere with the operating system detecting the external hard drive. Reboot the computer if the USB hard drive is still not recognized. Plug the USB cable into another USB port and check to see if the device is detected. If you are using a USB hub, remove the device and plug the external hard drive directly into a USB port. If the computer still fails to recognize the device, the external hard drive itself may be experiencing a hardware problem. Check the status of the hard drive in the "Device Manager" window. Under Windows XP, right click "My Computer" and select "Device Manager." For Windows Vista and Windows 7, click the "Windows" button in the lower left corner of the screen, then type "Computer Management" in the search bar and press "Enter." Select "Device Manager" in the "Computer Management" window. In the Device Manager window, click the "+" sign that appears beside "Disk Drives." If the external drive is not listed, click "Other Devices" in the Device Manager window and see if an "Unknown Device" appears. Windows 7 First, please disconnect all USB devices and then perform the following steps:

Click "Start" button, type "devmgmt.msc" (without quotation marks) in the "Search" bar and press "Enter". Click "Continue" if necessary.

In Device Manager, double click to expand "Universal Serial Bus controllers", right click on the Host Controller, click "Uninstall" and click "OK".

Repeat the step 2 to uninstall all items under "Universal Serial Bus controllers".


Then, restart your computer and Windows 7 will reinstall all USB controllers automatically. If the hard drive that has failed is the same one that you are trying to recover from might the reason that you are getting this error. This could be an issue where the part of the hard drive you are trying to access is corrupt and not accessible which would explain the reason that it would let you access the other partition. Now I have seen cases where Malware can break the link of a Hard Drive. So let's try a couple of steps. Let's go back in to "Disk Management" Lets right click on the partition that you are not able to access and select "Change Drive Letter and Paths" Now try selecting a new Drive Letter. This will restore the path if it has been broken. The external hard drive may have been detected but the device is not working properly. If it is still under warranty, take the device to the computer store where it was purchased to have it repaired or replaced. Hope this helps.

HI guys, I found a solution to a similar problem with the buffalo portable HDD that I brought from my friend. I just changed the HDD cable with the cable from Western Digital My Passport HDD and all problems were sorted out. Physically the WD cable is bit thicker than the Buffalo HDD cable. So suspect the cable is the problem. Please check if this is the problem with your Buffalo HDD before formatting. All the best

Indrajit Pande

hi hazel.
see if this link helps you out.
laptop is no longer recognizing the Buffalo External Hard Drive Google...

set your bios to boot from your normal drive, not the ide buffalo drive ...

Make sure that u r really connected and chek the device manager is that device working properly and restore the system configuration

Check the usb port function in the computer bios settings and be sure that it is set to yes. Connect properly your external drive. If it has two wire usb connections, use both to obtain the maximum power that will be need by your drive.

Some of the externals have mapping issues in Windows.  Although the TB shows in devices, you may need to remap it (right click on My Computer for mapping options) and in some cases, changing the drive letter will fix your problem.  There's really no 1 definitive solution for these.  If you're unable to fix the problem by remapping or changing the drive letter, you can partition the drive to recover your data.  As far as the slow transfer rate goes, almost all externals are formatted in FAT.  This has issues of its own with safely removing devices and slow transfer rates.  I prefer to format my externals and flash drives in NTSF for more reliability.  Best of luck.

my Buffalo external hard disc can be detected by laptop, but my access is denied. When i click on the hard disc icon, it popped out a message box prompting me to reformat my hard disc. Is there any other way to retrieve my files before reformat or
is there any other way to recover my files after reformat?
Is there any other way to troubleshoot my hard disc other than reformatting it?
Please help me, I am desperate to recover all my files because they are too important/precious to lose it.