Explorer can't find external drive, but it is in device manager

NatS1011 · Tuesday at 9:38 PM

I plugged in an HD and Explorer just cannot find it. It shows up in device manager though, see image.

getting properties on it within Device Manager, it does say "This device is working properly"

The "Volumes" tab therein shows nothing.

The Driver tab, clicking "Update Driver" and having it "Search Automatically for Drivers" results in it saying the most updated driver for this device is installed.

NatS1011 · Tuesday at 9:55 PM

UPDATE: I have now tried 5 different external hard drives of 3 different makes . Explorer was unable to see three out of 5 of them and could see exactly 1 out of 2 of two different types of makes. All 5 HDs show in Device Manager under Disk Drives.

So it isn't an HD make / type thing as the two makes that I had two of, each of them exactly half work.

Scannerman · Tuesday at 10:05 PM

What does it show in Disk Management?

antspants · Tuesday at 10:06 PM

Open Disk Management

Check the drives has been assigned a drive letter

Scannerman · Tuesday at 10:12 PM

Very likely an initialization thing or drive needs to be formatted.

antspants · Tuesday at 10:15 PM

If Disk Management shows a drive that has no drive letter, right click on the drive and select a drive letter

If Disk Management shows a drive as Unallocated Space, do Option Two below to initialize it.

Initialize Disk in Windows 11

This tutorial will show you how to Initialize a new "unknown" RAW disk in Windows 10 and Windows 11. If you add a new disk to your PC, and it doesn't show up in File Explorer, you might need to initialize the disk before you can use it. You can only initialize a drive that's not yet formatted...

www.elevenforum.com

Brink said:
If you add a new disk to your PC, and it doesn't show up in File Explorer, you might need to initialize the disk before you can use it.

NatS1011 · Tuesday at 10:37 PM

What does it show in Disk Management?

Good recommendation. Checking now it is all over the place.

Drive 1: Does not show in Explorer, Does Show in devices, Disk management shows as wiped -- sadly that explains everything for this one but then I have a new issue as someone wiped my drive which is aggravating. But that is a human issue instead of a Windows 11 issue. [THIS DRIVE IS SOLVED]

Drive 2: Does show in Explorer, Does Show in devices, Disk management shows two partitions with one EFI boot partition, the other "Healthy (Primary Partition." That EFI system partition is weird and crazy because that was just a backup drive, where did that extra partition come from. Same make as Drive 4

Drive 3: Does not show in explorer, Does Show in devices, Disk management says "Healthy (Active, Primary Partition)" for one large partition that fills the space. Same make as Drive 5

Dive 4: Does not show in Explorer, Does Show in devices, Disk management shows two partitions with one EFI boot partition,the other "Healthy (Primary Partition." That EFI system partition is weird and crazy because that was just a data backup drive, where did that extra partition come from? Same make as Drive 2 ... so apparently having that EFI boot partition doesn't help.

Drive 5: Does show in Explorer, Does Show in devices, Disk management shows one partition with the no name as "Healthy (Primary Partition." Same make as Drive 3

EDIT: Just seeing ants pants post now. Let me try to add a drive letter to those healthy drives that just wouldn't load.

NatS1011 · Tuesday at 10:51 PM

If Disk Management shows a drive that has no drive letter, right click on the drive and select a drive letter

Drive 3: Right clicking on the only partition, "Healthy (Primary Partition)" only has two options: 1. Delete Volume... or 2. help ...there is no option to add a drive letter.

Drive 4: Right clicking on the "Healthy (Primary Partition)" among the options only has two options: 1. Delete Volume... or 2. help ...there is no option to add a drive letter.

Drive 4 oddly has an empty 128 MB at the end but I am not allowed to extend the previous partition at all (its just not an available option.)

`

NatS1011 · Tuesday at 11:41 PM

Just checked drives 3 and 4 on Linux mint, both of those drives work fine and all the data is there, windows 11 just doesn't like them for unknown reasons, which is very frustrating as these are the drives I want the most. It would be really nice if I could get these working on windows. I guess I am going to have to like copy them over somewhere to another HD that windows 11 has freshly formatted so its "princess and the pea" level delicate sensibilities can be accounted for.

Interestingly enough, I put drive 1 on a linux mint box too just out of pure curiosity, and while it can't read that it does believe there are some things on drive 1 including multiple partitions. It doesn't 100 % register as pure open space like it does on Windows 11, but it still is inaccessible. I might have to take drive 1 to a data recovery expert.

Scannerman · Wednesday at 12:19 AM

Before you reformat or initialize anything there may be a way to recover most of your missing data. If it isn't important then by all means go ahead with formatting those drives that have no valuable data. As for Linux, yes, Explorer acts like they're not even there. If you label the drive or mess with it in any way you'll likely lose your Linux. For data recovery I like to use MiniTool Partition Wizard Pro Ultimate. If you format the Linux drives in Disk Management Windows 11 should see them also. Of course you'll lose all the data but that's the way it goes.

Scannerman · Wednesday at 12:25 AM

NatS1011 · Wednesday at 12:42 AM

But those two non-functional ones weren't linux drives, one was windows other was OS X (.... though I guess that is a flavor of linux)

There is only one drive I can't access anywhere, "drive 1" though linux sees that there is stuff there but it can't get at it (that was not a linux formatted drive either.)

By formating drives I meant:
1. get a new one
2. format it for windows 11 on windows 11
3. get on linux and move everything over from the perfectly good drives that windows 11 doesn't like and copy them across to the new windows 11 formated drive.

XxXxX · Wednesday at 12:50 AM

sometimes on Linux its a permission problem.
please try opening the file browser as sudo root.

open a terminal and write (if nemo is the file manager)
sudo nemo
enter your password
press enter

this should give you access to the drive and the files.

best of luck, Steve ..

NatS1011 · Wednesday at 12:57 AM

I don't think you understand Steve / XxXxX -- I have no access issues on linux, all the issues are on Windows 11. I am trying to get these things working on Windows 11 and thought they might be dead until I plugged them into a linux box, and they are all fine. The issue isn't anything on linux, that is working great, the issue is why Windows can only read half of these drives that linux can when none of them are linux formatted.

Scannerman · Wednesday at 6:01 AM

NatS1011 said:
By formating drives I meant:
1. get a new one
2. format it for windows 11 on windows 11
3. get on linux and move everything over from the perfectly good drives that windows 11 doesn't like and copy them across to the new windows 11 formated drive.

As I stated earlier if the data doesn't matter you can reformat all those drives and Win 11 will "see" them. No need to get a new one. If the drive shows up in Disk Management as a black bar and greyed out it likely needs to be initialized before it can be formatted. If it only shows as a black bar then it simply needs formatting. After formatting you can give them a drive letter and a label. I like to label my drives to better identify them in Disk Management. An initialized drive should also show in Device Manager.

jumanji · Wednesday at 9:46 AM

Hi @NatS1011 ,

Try this:
Download v 1.6.5 of the drivecleanup.zip from Drive Tools for Windows (Roll down on this page till you see DriveCleanup V 1.6.5 )

Unzip it to a folder, say drivecleanup.

You will have two folders Win32 and x64 each containing DriveCleanup.exe for 32 bit and 64 bit respectively.

Safely Remove all USB storage devices from your system (Nothing plugged into the USB ports except your USB Keyboard and USB mouse) and reboot. Disconnect internet/network if you have network drives.

Right click on the DriveCleanup.exe and run as administrator. (Use the DriveCleanup.exe file appropriate for your bit version of Windows.).

After the clean up act, reboot and check whether the drive/s get a drive letter and becomes accessible.

( When you plug in your USB devices after this cleanup, these will be installed afresh. What you have done is to remove all non-present devices and drive letters associated with them from the registry and start with a clean slate. Hopefully that should resolve the problem.)

NatS1011 · Wednesday at 1:15 PM

@Scannerman

As I stated earlier if the data doesn't matter you can reformat all those drives and Win 11...

The data is what I want. The physical drives are meaningless to me, the only thing I want is access to that data, accumulated over a decade, on my windows 11 machine. I'll just buy a new drive if I want a new blank windows 11 drive. Any response that is not about recovering that data is not useful to me. Any advice that destroys that data is less than useful to me as that is actively harmful to what I am trying to accomplish.

OldNavy · Wednesday at 1:28 PM

Have you tried different usb ports?

NatS1011 · Wednesday at 1:29 PM

@jumanji

Thanks, this sounds useful. I'll give it a try when I get time, but now I am in a super rush because I spent so many hours fumbling around with drives yesterday, and then just moved across everything I immediately needed via thumb drive ferrying it from the linux box where the drives worked to the win 11 machine that refuses to read much of anything. So I have laboriously created a kluge that should keep me going for a while.

Amazing how things change. Until recently one needed a windows box just to maintain and repair the ridiculous BS on their linux box -- if one dared to have one. Starting at windows 10, but especially on windows 11, I need a linux box just to maintain and repair the ridiculous BS on Windows.

NatS1011 · Wednesday at 1:36 PM

@OldNavy Yes, but the ports should be fine as the drives do show up in device manager, both under drives and on the appropriate USB bus tabs, and also show up in disk management programs. So every thing hardware related and software-hardware driver and other interface is detecting stuff in these disks through the USB ports. These disks just don't show up in explorer or anything else that can access the individual files contained therein, which appear to be fine by checking with a different system.

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