[Fixed]: Steam Not Recognizing External Hard Drive

Many users prefer storing their games on an external hard drive to save internal storage space. However, sometimes when you plug in the external drive, Steam doesn’t recognize it as expected. This issue can arise from various causes, including connection problems, file system corruption, or a missing drive letter.

Don’t worry! This guide covers a range of effective solutions to fix Steam not detecting your external hard drive. Read on to recover access to your game data in no time!

How to Fix Steam Not Recognizing External Hard Drive?

This section covers 4 practical ways to fix the issue of your external hard drive not showing up in Steam. Pick the method that best suits your situation.

Method 1. Reconnect the External Hard Drive

Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the most effective. A loose connection or a temporary glitch in the USB port can cause your external hard drive to go undetected. Before diving into more complex fixes, it's a good idea to start by checking the connection.

Step 1: Safely eject your external hard drive from your computer.

Step 2: Reconnect it, preferably using a different USB port.

Step 3: Open Steam and see if your external hard drive is now recognized.

Method 2. Assign a Letter to the External Hard Drive

Another common reason why Steam doesn’t recognize your external hard drive is that the drive lacks a drive letter or its current letter is conflicting with another device. When this happens, Windows may not be able to properly access the drive, which means Steam won’t detect it either.

To fix this, you can assign a new drive letter to the external hard drive using AOMEI Partition Assistant. This professional disk management tool makes the process simple and hassle-free. 

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Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

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Follow these steps to assign a letter to your drive:

Step 1: Connect your external hard drive to your computer.

Step 2: Launch AOMEI Partition Assistant; right-click the drive you want to assign a letter to, and then select Advanced> Change Drive Letter.

Step 3: Click the little box behind New Drive Letter to start a pop-up menu and choose which letter you like as your new drive letter. Then click OK.

Step 4: Click Apply to submit the task.

Method 3. Check the External Hard Drive for Errors

Even if your external hard drive has a drive letter, errors on the drive itself can prevent Steam from detecting the external hard drive. Bad sectors, file system corruption, or other logical errors can make the drive unreadable for many applications, including Steam. You can run a disk check to identify and fix these issues. Here's a step-by-step guide:

Step 1. Open File Explorer and click on This PC. Right-click the drive you want to check and choose Properties from the context menu.

Step 2. Go to the Tools tab and click on the Check button.

Step 3. If any issues are found, you’ll have the option to repair the drive automatically.

Method 4. Format the External Hard Drive

If none of the above methods have worked, formatting the drive may be your last resort. This solution is especially helpful when the drive’s file system is severely corrupted and beyond repair. Formatting will delete all data on the drive and create a clean file system, making it fully accessible and ready for use by Windows and Steam.

To make the process easier, you can use AOMEI Partition Assistant. It allows you to format external hard drives with just a few clicks and supports various file systems such as NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, and more. 

Free Download
Windows 11/10/8.1/8/7

100% Secure

Here's how to format an external hard drive using AOMEI Partition Assistant:

Step 1: Right-click the partition you want to format, and then select Format Partition. 

Step 2: In the pop-up window, you could reset the partition label, file system, and the cluster size. Then, click OK to confirm the changes.

Step 3: Click Apply > Proceed to commit the operation.

Conclusion

Steam not recognizing your external hard drive? As you've seen, there are several effective solutions to resolve this issue. We highly recommend using AOMEI Partition Assistant to manage your drive with ease. This completely free tool offers a range of helpful features, including cloning disks, resizing partition size, and initializing disks. We hope this guide helped you resolve the problem and get back to enjoying your game library without interruption!

FAQs

❓ Why does my external hard drive show up in File Explorer but not in Steam?

This usually happens when the external drive hasn’t been added as a Steam library folder. You can add your external drive as a new library location:

• Launch Steam and open the Settings menu.
• Select Downloads from the left-hand navigation.
• Choose the Steam Library Folders section, click Steam Library Folder, and navigate to the specific location on the external hard drive.

❓ What file system should I use for a Steam external hard drive?

NTFS is the recommended file system for external drives used with Steam on Windows. It supports large file sizes and is fully compatible with game installations.

❓ Do I need to reinstall my games after fixing the external hard drive?

Not always. If the drive was just disconnected or had a drive letter issue, Steam should detect the games once the drive is accessible again. If files were lost due to disk formatting, you may need to reinstall.