Cannot See External Drives - No Drive Letters Showing In Explorer?
Aug 15, 2015
My new windows 10 only sees my PC - when searching for my files in Explorer, it cannot 'see' my two external drives when I plug them in. I've looked in Device Manager and they are not showing in there either. How can I tell Win 10 to access my external drives?
I thought Win 10 would automatically spot my external drivers the moment I plugged them in? Then it would go search for and install the appropriate drivers - but it isn't doing that..
I upgraded my PC from W8.1 to W10, all went very smooth. I then worked on upgrading a laptop SSD drive to from W8.1 to W10 which I planned to then install in my wife's laptop. It was easier for me to upgrade the drive on my PC then swap the drives than take her laptop for awhile. Well...that created my problem. I had 2 drive C's on my PC.
I was able to boot quite a few times between the drives (swapping the primary drive in BIOS). But then W10 "fixed" my drives, and now I have only one C drive (the SSD laptop drive) and my original C drive is now F. My PC now only boots to the SSD C drive and I'm not able to use Disk Mgmt to swap the letters. Disconnecting the SSD drive stops the PC from booting because the original C drive is F.
How to either swap the drive letters or remove the SSD drive and somehow be able to rename the F drive to C.
I have some harddrives on a "server" computer in my home-network running win 7. From my "client" running windows 10 I am mounting these drives using
psexec server -u username -p password -d net share F=F: /GRANT:user,Full /GRANT:media,read 2>nul net use F: serverF
Today my client crashed and I had to remove the graphics card. Since then I cannot enter my network drives anymore, the commands seem to run, but when I try accessing the drives I get a message indicating I should put a media into these drives. Also, I cannot mount them manually using "map network drive" since the drive letters are not available.
I tried removing them from HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMMountedDevices (they are listed there as "DosDevicesF" etc.), but once I restart, they are there (in the registry) again.
how I could fix this? Win10 somehow seems to remember that thes drives once have been there before and keeps blocking the drive letters...
My Maxtor external hard drive is not showing under This PC, but is under Device Manager. Updating the driver comes back as driver is up to date. Changing Bios setting between UEFI and Legacy do not make a difference. Using a different USB port does not make a difference.
I can get full access to the drive if I boot up LinuxMint from a USB stick.
Microsoft says this is a manufacturers driver problem. Acer says this is Windows problem.
My external drive(Samsung) connected via usb3 has started showing twice in file explorer. Opening either shows exactly the same files inside. Screen shot below, I've never tried this so I hope I've done it OK...
After a system refresh of Windows 10 all external disk storage drives, Micro SD and USB are listed twice in file explorer. This is a common problem, reported many times in forums and community support web sites. Could a solution be to reload file explorer. Is this possible and where would I find the download?
I have several server drives mapped to my Surface Pro 3 tablet, and from time to time they disappear from Windows Explorer and XYplorer (an Explorer replacement). They are still there and mapped, as Net Use shows them mapped properly. But to get them tho show up in either Explorer or XYplorer, I have to physically remap them (right click: Map Network Drive...) and when I do so they already show up with the proper drive connection but won't appear unless I finish the remapping. XYplorer has a tool to reconnect all network drives, but nothing happens there.
When I insert any removable drive (USB, SD cards, etc) the device shows up twice in Explorer. Once under "This PC" tree and the other as a device. See attached pic (USB Drive H):
I remember hearing about this being the way it's designed to work, but frankly it's a bit silly - I only need to see a single entry for the drive/device...
Is there any way to get rid of one of these entries without stuffing up some other Explorer feature?
I have a new computer. I want to clone the system to a new SSD. Can I change the drive letter of the SSD to C: after cloning?
My new computer (an ASUS) currently has Windows 8.1. I intend to upgrade to Windows 10 before I do anything more. I will move the old Windows elsewhere before cloning if that is possible.
I have the SSD installed physically but it is not formatted or anything. I intend to use the Samsung Data Migration tool to do the clone. During the clone, the SSD will of course not have the drive letter "C". After the cloning, it must have the drive letter "C", correct? I know we can assign drive letters in Disk Management. I am familiar with partitions and I know that the boot drive/partition is marked as "Active".
Can I re-assign drive letters in Disk Management and delay the change until the next boot? This is just a guess, but it makes sense that the feature might exist. In other words, after the clone, can I change the drive letter ("C") of the current drive to something such as "T" and the SSD drive's letter to "C" and then the change will be effective upon the next boot? The hard drive has a second partition that is empty and is the "D:". It will be confusing for others to have the SSD partition as "C:" and the first partition some other letter and the second partition as "D:" but I understand and I am the only one that will use it. That is a minor detail.
I do not intend to use the old Windows after the successful clone unless I need to remove the SSD for return to ASUS. My new computer had a bad motherboard when I received it but I hope I do not need to return it again.
I know that some people will suggest that I do a fresh install. (I see: Clean Install Windows 10 Directly without having to Upgrade First - Windows 10 Forums.). I want to avoid doing that if possible. I am not sure that I can install everything else that ASUS installs but hopefully that is possible. If however I can simply swap drive letters after the clone then that should be the simplest solution.
How do I assign a range of letters, that can be used for e.g. external flash disks, external ssd's/hdd's or memory cards?
I have this nasty issue. I have two Network Attached Drives, on server. They work fine, D and E. But I also have NAS [DS 716+] which is on NAS drive F:. Whenever I shut down my DS 716+, and I connect some external hdd/ssd/memory card, it always asigns letter F:. Which makes these devices quiet inaccessible, or hard accessible, I can't double click them to open, I need to type in manually F: etc.
Is there any way via msc or something, where I can define a range of all external hdd's/ssd's and/or memory cards?
I recently upgraded my PC to windows 10 and every since have been unable to access any USB external drive. The laptop picks up the drives and acknowledges that they are there and working but they do not appear in file explorer. I have looked in disk management and the drives are there and healthy. The USB ports work 100% as i have plugged in keyboards etc to test and all the drives i've tried work with other computers. I've reinstalled windows twice. Ran various disk cleanup utilities, checked for hidden drives etc.I need to upload video files to my laptop to edit for work.
I tried the Windows 10 upgrade when it first came out and immediately went back to 8.1 when I couldn't get a single one of my internal SATA hard drives to mount.. I have 5 of them, and I just wasn't about to mess with that when 8.1 had no problems at all. Now I have tried it again and the same problem is happening. I want to see if I can figure it out this time. I am using the latest SATA and Chipset drivers for Win10 64 bit from Gigabyte's Website (I am using a Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Rev. 1.1.
I am "testing" Win10 using a bootable clone of my main SSD (that still has 8.1 on it) and I upgraded it to 10 just to mess with so I can figure out this ridiculous problem.
My problem is that all of my internal SATA hard drives (with the exception of the system drive) cannot be assigned a drive letter in Disk Management. They show as healthy NTFS partitions but I get 1 of 2 different errors when I click on "Change Drive letters and Paths":
1. "Virtual Disk Manager: The System cannot find the file specified."
2 "Disk Management: The operation filed to complete because the Disk Management Console view is not up-to date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task. If the problem persists close the Disk Management console, then restart disk management or restart the computer" Hint: none of the recommended fixes in the error message change anything.
I HAVE been able to assign the partitions a letter and mount them using a third party disk manager called "MiniTool Partition Wizard". It lets me mount the partitions and it works! ..However, if I restart the computer, I am back to square one and have to manually assign each drive letter for each partition every time.
This is easily the worst experience I have ever had upgrading an OS, and one of the most mind boggling issues I have had with Windows in general. I really like Windows 10 and want to keep using it but half of my hard drives being un-mountable is a complete deal breaker right now.
I just upgraded from Windows 7 PRO to Windows 10. I notice that my external USB 3.0 drives can't be found. Before the upgrade it was ok. The only external device that does show is a Sandisk FIT USB 2.0 stick.
This morning I tried to login to my windows machine, windows 10 pro, intel i5 3.30ghz, 12gb RAM, 2TB HD. and kept telling me password was incorrect. I then removed windows password thru other admin user, and now all external hd's except for c: drive all lecked by bitlocker. Never installed or activated it.
I have 2 internal sata drives and 2 usb drives locked. I have gone to control panel, bitlocker, and tried to unlock drives, tried to do a search for key id on pc and nothing is found. My raw files are in the backup drives.
I clean installed Win 10 RTM version on my laptop a few weeks ago. I have a basic GPT setup.
Installation went fine, however the installer created a 'Recovery' drive (D with a size of 600 MB (262 MB free) & a 'Local Disk' drive (E with a size of 451 MB (128 MB free).
I am stumped as to why it assigned letters to them. If you see the attachment of a snapshot of Partition Wizard, you will be able to see the setup.
My question, besides why the assigned letters is the where the status is listed as 'None'. Is it safe to delete these?? I am assuming that the only partitions i need to keep are the 'ESP', which is 'Active & Boot' - so it is needed to be able to boot into Windows. How about the one listed as 'Other' - the capacity is 128 MB & all 128 MB are used - do i save this one as well?
I really wanted a less cluttered setup - so when all these partitions were created, particularly 'D' & 'E', i was perplexed as to why they were created.
In recent weeks, it has become impossible for me to safely remove my external drives. (Mostly, I use Western Digital Passports, Passport Ultras, etc).
I am using Windows 10.
I close all of my programs and folders. I get the "busy" message and to try again later. I run Unlocker on the drives, and Unlocker shows no activity or actions that I can take. I bring up my task manager and nothing is running. I try to safely eject from the WD utility and it doesn't work. I try to eject by going to my computer, right clicking on the drive, and ejecting from there. Sometimes I simply wait for half an hour, read some articles, try again. I get the same "busy" or can't shut down message.
I read online that I could try to Device Manager, click on the drive, and under policies select "Optimize for Performance." However, the computer must restart for changes to take place, and when i've tried, I get stuck on an infinite "Restarting" screen.
I read somewhere that I can try to empty a hidden recycle bin on my external, but I can't seem to reveal it?
With Win7 I used to open one external drive, then through My computer locate the other drive. I would have each drive on its own window. I could then select relevant files on one drive copy and paste into the other drive. With Win10 if I click on File explorer I can open one external drive, where can I locate the other drive to put in a separate window. If I click on the other drive, it just opens it in the same window. Win7 and previous versions used to be so simple.
My HP Pavilion all-in-one computer does not recognize my Seagate external hard drive after I installed Windows 10. Everything worked well with the Windows 8 but neither system will recognize the other once I upgraded to Windows 10.
Since upgrading to W10, My puter will no longer load when I have my external hard-drive attached. When I switch on my puter, I get a black screen with the message 'Non-System disk or disk error, Replace and strike any key when ready'.
When I reboot with the ext HD disconnected the reboot is fine and W10 loads no problem. If I reconnect the Ext HD while the puter is up and running, no problem, and both the computer and now attached external hard drive function perfectly.
I have tried reformatting the external hard drive but I still have the same start-up problem when the ext HD is attached on start-up.
Windows Search returning no results on one of my external harddrives. I have already:
Tried indexing the HDD and rebuilding.Non-indexing and rebuilding.Indexing only specific folders on the HDD and rebuilding.Specifically disabling indexing for this drive in the drive's properties.Checked that I have the appropriate permissions on the drive (they are identical to my other HDDs).
Crude example of my problem:
I am looking for the following file, A:Example est.txt.I am inside the A:Example folder.I search for "test", "*" or "txt".It says there are no results.
And it says "no results" instantly - it doesn't appear to even try.
I do not have a second drive with sufficient space to move the contents to do a format - so I'm looking for non-destructive solutions.
my cd drive icon was showing and working then stopped showing up. I did as much research as I could and purchased AVG driver updater and it worked for a few days and won't work again.
I was moving video files (AVI) from an external backup drive (WD Element) to another external backup drive (Seagate expansion) after having moved another video file from my laptop (Acer) to that Seagate external drive. The night before I had moved some video files from the WD to the Seagate with no problem but using a different laptop (Sony). These video files are all rather large and I can tell that the space is still being allocated on the Seagate because while the folder cannot be seen the space that was there is still being used by the Seagate because I am missing over 100GB which would be about the size of that now missing folder.
What happened was there was a message that the Seagate drive could not be recognized while the files were in the process of being moved to that drive from the WD. This is after I had already moved a video file of about 26GB with no problem into that now missing folder. When I saw the message I attempted several times to move files to that Seagate drive but I could not so I unplugged the Seagate drive from that laptop (Acer) then reinserted it into the usb port. I got a repair message that said it needed to be repaired because some files were corrupted and that no data would be lost but the drive would be unavailable during the repairs so I checked ok. It took only about 30 seconds and it said the repairs were completed and the drive was available but I noticed that the folder that I was moving the video files to was not gone.
As I stated there are more than 100GB of files in that folder some are video and others are audio recordings that were created by using the myrecording (audio and video) features of the Acer laptop and they are very important so I need to figure out if they can be retrieved from that Seagate drive. I have not copied anything else onto that Seagate drive but I have plugged it into the Acer computer to ensure it is being recognized. Both the external drives WD and Seagate are plug and play that are powered from the usb -- they have no power adapters.
