The “Drive Not Recognized” Panic – Tips for External SSD Recovery

We’ve all been there. You plug in your external SSD, the light flashes, you hear the ‘ding’ from Windows… but nothing shows up in File Explorer.

Whether it’s an old Mac-formatted drive you’re trying to read on a PC, or a ‘dead’ partition on your primary backup, the panic is real. I’m opening this thread to crowdsource the best first steps when a drive goes invisible. What’s your ‘secret weapon’ for forcing a drive to show up without formatting it and losing everything?