Steam External Hard Drive issues

[Detarak Oonson]

So I use an external hard drive while playing on my laptop (a seagate backup plus slim, if it helps). I also have an identical external hard drive that I use as a backup. While downloading an update to one of my games today, I encountered an error where it appears that the external hardrive became corrupted and lost all my files. I tried to run the "chkdsk" command prompt to check it and fix it if possible, but it appears to be totally corrupted as none of my games are showing up and windows cannot seem to fix the problem. Okay, no worries, whatever, I'll use my backup that has most (not all) of my games on it and redownload what I need to. Except Steam doesn't recognise that either. I've tried everything I can think of, different cords, different USB ports, restarting my computer, hard restarting steam, everything, and it looks like nothing is working and steam doesnt recognize either of them which leads me to believe its possibly a steam issue or maybe some kind of weird virus? except I use a VPN and have anti-virus and nothing has come up...I really need help, as at this point I have lost 400+ gigs of data and I refuse to belive its all just....gone with no trace off of 2 separate hard drives. Has anyone encountered anything similar and how did you fix it? Do I have to buy a THIRD hard drive or is there some technical fix I havent thought of/done yet? PLEASE HELP ME IM SO FRUSTRATED!!!!!!!!!!

[ReBoot]

Steam has never really supported external drives. If you REALLY insist on using one, keep Steam on it as well.

[Supafly]

I'll echo Reboot. If you must use an external drive have Steam installed on the external drive. Do this for a few reasons

1. Drive will always be connected when you load Steam. If you load Steam without it connected you'll have to mess around as it won't see the drive or library
2. If there are any micro USB disconnects Steam itself will disconnect aswell as the library.

I've had Steam installed on an External drive like this several times over the years, for months on end without issues. Often to test a system I've built and show what it can do using my Games