Drive letter not being assigned to new external SSD drive

Windows 11 23H2 (OS Build 22631.4169)

I hope this is the right place to post my problem.

I have just purchased a 2Tb WD My Passport SSD drive (WDBAGF0020BGY-WESN). I inserted the drive into my USB-C port on the rear of my desktop PC and it recognised it and gave it a drive letter. I safely removed it and plugged it into the front of my PC where I have another USB-C port in an Akasa USB panel. This time, the drive letter was not issued although the drive was available in the Safely Remove USB devices area in the taskbar. I then plugged it into the back of my PC again and the same problem is persisting. I can see it in Device Manager and Disk Management but it does not have a drive letter after ejecting and reinserting and so is not available in Windows Explorer. After a reboot I can see a drive letter. When I plug the SSD drive into my husband's PC it is recognised after ejecting and reinserting.

I recently purchased a brand new WD HDD and had the exact same issue. I returned it because I thought it was faulty. Now I presume it is something to do with my computer. The reason I purchased a new drive is because my relatively old WD Elements HDD drive started to play up. It was taking a very long time to access and there were a few strange noises coming from it. Could this have somehow done something to my PC.

By the way, when I bought the new WD HDD the other day, I mapped it to a drive letter and ran into all sorts of issues so I did a system restore. The date of the restore point was from that same morning. I don't know whether that has any relevance but I thought I'd mention it.

I have other external HDD drives attached to the back of my PC too which appear to be working OK. They are not new to me as I have had these for several years.

Please help me. I am not technical and would appreciate some assistance to get this working properly.

AnnieB said:

I can see it in Device Manager and Disk Management but it does not have a drive letter after ejecting and reinserting and so is not available in Windows Explorer ..... When I plug the SSD drive into my husband's PC it is recognised after ejecting and reinserting.

Click to expand...

Right-click on Start and select Run. From the Run box run Diskpart.



In Diskpart type the command automount enable. From now on a USB drive will automatically be assigned a letter when you insert it.

Now THAT was a good one... assuming it works.


OP said a drive letter "was" assigned when plugged into a motherboard USB-C port, but not when plugged into the Akasa USB panel on the front of the PC.

Sounds like maybe an issue with the Akasa device itself?

Thank you for the suggestion @Bree

I have gone to check this and it looks like it is already enabled.

@Ghot

Unfortunately, it doesn't work in the back either after the first time after a reboot.

Ghot said:

Now THAT was a good one... assuming it works.

Click to expand...

We'll wait and see if it helps. It can do no harm to (re)enable automount.

may i ask have you formatted the new HDD yet.

Steve ..

@AnnieB

Does that Akasa device have a driver or software that comes with it?
I always mistrust 3rd party devices, (and possibly their software), when things don't seem to work correctly.


Might also want to try these... in an elevated command prompt.

sfc /scannow

Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth

What is the present status?

Can you please plugin the WD SSD into the rear port of the Desktop and post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management?

Thanks for the replies. I've been doing a bit more testing. Here is where I'm at now.

When I reboot my PC and plug the drive into the back this is what I see the first time

Windows Explorer

Safely Remove



Then after ejecting and reinserting, I get this.



The greyed out My Passport (E) is no longer there.

Also, it no longer shows in the Windows Explorer as before.


However what I have noticed is that it seems to be there if I expand the Computer tab which I didn't realise before.

After a reboot, it shows correctly in Windows Explorer again but only until I eject.

I have also ejected my Lacie (N) drive. Things went fine and then after a second time it didn't see it at all when I plugged it back in (ie. the drive didn't light up and no noise came from it). I physically switched it off and on again on the drive and then my PC froze. After a reboot the Lacie drive was visible so I ejected my WD Elements 6TB (Y) drive and plugged it back in and it was fine - these are desktop drives all plugged into the back of the PC.

I am ignoring the Akasa panel for the moment because I'm not sure it's working correctly. The port might be a bit dodgy because my phone connects and disconnects all by itself when I use it.

I have also done the automount enable thing just in case.

Here are some further screenshots as requested.

@AnnieB

Might want to reformat that as NTFS (rather than exFAT), if it's only going to connect to a Windows machine.
Here, I'm assuming that Disk 4 is the new 2TB WD drive.

@Ghot

Yes, it's Disk 4. Will reformatting as NTFS solve the issue? The reason I ask is the drive behaves correctly in my husband's Windows 11 desktop PC.

AnnieB said:

@Ghot

Yes, it's Disk 4. Will reformatting as NTFS solve the issue? The reason I ask is the drive behaves correctly in my husband's Windows 11 desktop PC.

Click to expand...

No way to tell unless you try. [You can just do a quick format]
I have seen others with issues with exFAT drives. Not a lot, but there are some.
Why some have issues with exFAT, I don't know.
I only use NTFS or (if necessary), FAT32.

I would also try (not at the same time), removing the power (temporarily) from that Akasa device.
Just as a troubleshooting aid.

@Ghot

I think before I attempt to reformat the drive I'll wait for a reply from Western Digital - I have put a support request in and I don't want to invalidate the warranty.

I'm not a techie so don't know how to disconnect the Akasa panel as I had this PC built for me in a local shop.

Too many pictures can only confuse - atleast I am confused connecting and visualising it.

Please follow the procedure given below and post a screenshot of Windows Disk Management.

Shut down your PC. Pull off the mains power plug. Unplug all USB connected storage devices ( you have one too many and haphazard drive letters ). Press the power button and keep it pressed for about thirty seconds to remove any residual charge in the PC.. This is called a hard reset. Sometimes a hard reset can resolve these system related tricky problems in the PC.

Now restore the mains power and boot your PC. When the boot process completes and the desktop settles, plug in only the WD SSD into the rear port.

Take a screenshot of Windows Disk Management and post.

If you have any third party Partitioning software like MiniTool Partition Wizard, post a screenshot of how the disk appears in it.

@jumanji

I have done as you suggested and here is the screenshot of Disk Management with just the WD SSD drive. I don't have any partitioning software.



After ejecting and plugging the drive back in, the drive letter temporarily disappeared from Disk management but reappeared again afetr a while.



The drive letter still does not show in the Safely Remove area and the letter only shows in Windows Explorer if I expand This PC after the first ejection as mentioned above.

AnnieB said:

After ejecting and plugging the drive back in, the drive letter temporarily disappeared from Disk management but reappeared again afetr a while.

Click to expand...

As it happens, I wiped one of my external usb HDDs today to make screenshots for questions on another thread. That meant I had a spare drive I could play with.

I can confirm that with the drive formatted as exFAT there is indeed a delay before Windows picks up the drive letter. There's no such delay when formatted as NTFS.



...and a bit later:



The delay seems to be down to relying on automount. There is a possible workaround that seems to mount the exFAT drive immediately. In Disk Management remove the drive letter, then assign it a letter again. Windows now knows the letter it should for this USB drive and assigns it as soon as it recognises the drive has been inserted.

@Bree

Thanks for your reply.

I intend to assign a permanent drive letter to it but I am loathe to do this until I get this fixed as I did this with the WD Elements HDD drive I recently bought and returned. I ended up scrubbing the drive letters which affected my mapped NAS drive letters and I couldn't get the letters back so I had to revert to a system restore in the end. I am not very technical so I may have gone about things in the wrong way.

Whilst the drive letter shows up again after a while in Disk Management, it doesn't show up in the Safely Remove devices area in the taskbar and only shows in Windows Explorer under This PC if it's expanded. Upon a reboot it's there as it should be unless I eject it and plug it back in again.

The fact that the new SSD drive works correctly in my husband's PC suggests something is amiss with my PC but I don't have the knowledge to know what it is. I want to use the SSD drive for backups and it needs to be reliable. I have a feeling the issue will arise with any new external hard drive I buy and so I really don't know what to do.

AnnieB said:

Whilst the drive letter shows up again after a while in Disk Management, it doesn't show up in the Safely Remove devices area in the taskbar and only shows in Windows Explorer under This PC if it's expanded.

Click to expand...

I use a Drive Dock that holds 2 SATA drives, either HDD or SSD and either 2.5" or 3.5" drives or a mix. It does not always show the drive letters but shows the Dock name, click to remove. I also use USB drives but always give them a suitable Label/Name such as WDMyBook4TB [quit using Elements after a couple failures]..

These are some options / steps that may be useful :


1) Attach the drive to desired port and reboot



2) Run Disk partition info > post a share link






3) Download and install: Drive letter view > post a share link




4) Run HD Sentinel > post a share link Images and text report




To view information on devices attached via USB: