USB External Drive Does Not Show on Windows Explorer
Having important data handy saves a lot of trouble looking for it when needed. So, I invested in a 160Gb SATA USB external drive. One day at office I plugged the drive on one of my computers. I was waiting for it to be listed in windows explorer. I waited for some time but still it did not. What did I do wrong? Did the drive got busted? This seems unusual.
I checked the system tray and the device icon is shown. I did a further check. I selected on the USB Mass Storage Device listed and clicked stop button. To my relief the drive is still listed and recognized. The problem somehow was that it was not assigned by windows XP some drives.
How to do a quick check with Windows Computer Management console:
- Click Start -> Run
- On the open text box type -> compmgmt.msc
- Click Ok -> Computer Management window will open
- On the Left pane click Storage -> Disk Management
On the right pane will show the list of USB external drive partition without drive letters
To assign a drive letter on a drive:
- right click on the particular partition
- choose Change Drive Letter and Paths
- assign a system available drive to the partition
- click OK
I hope that when you go to your windows explorer you now can see and access your USB external drive.
Posted
on
Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 8:35 pm under
Thank you, Sir!
Your suggestion is working for me. Great!
December 17th, 2007 at 8:32 amPrefect!!! Thank you!
December 26th, 2007 at 1:54 amhi,
I have same problem with usb devices.
When I tried to manually assign letter to the removable disk listed in the disk management but It gives me message like:
disk management console view is not up-to-date, refresh it, restart disk management or restart ur pc but even after doing it the problem is still there.
any solution?
waiting
February 4th, 2008 at 3:02 am@sushil - your usb device maybe is having a partition/format not recognizable by WinXP. Was it formated in linux? One cause would be that it’s only partitioned but not formatted.
February 5th, 2008 at 8:02 pmI’m having the same problem as sushil - Vista thinks my new partitions on my SATA HDD are “unknown devices” and when I try to reformat these or assign drive letters, I get the “The operation failed to complete because the Disk Management console view is not up-to-date” message.
Can’t find a solution anywhere that works for me.
March 25th, 2008 at 7:36 amHello,
October 29th, 2008 at 9:34 pmI was having the same problem and was to finally figure out how to get the drive to display.
Great! However what I really dont understand is the inconsistency between computers. I have XP on my laptop and ths condition does not occur. I can see the drive in Explorer as soon as its plugged in.
Whats the cause? On the desktop compouter I have a number of Mapped Network Drives. When I plug in the drive(Card Reader) I hear the “bong” that the drive was detected but its not listed in explorer. When I go into Disk Management, its there but has a drive letter assigned that is already in use by a network drive. Renaming the drive letter does work, but why do I need to go through this process on one computer and not the other? (The laptop has mapped drives as well)
I am unable to locate my USB Verbatim 160G drive in windows explorer nor is it listed in disk management. I can see it listed when I try to disconnect hardware from the system tray, and even there it does not have a drive name, only listed as “ext hard drive usb device” and I could successfully disconnect it. But still cant understand why I am not seeing it anywhere else.
November 1st, 2008 at 8:55 amAs a follow up to my earlier post, I am using Windows XP and I am able to see the drive when I connect it to my laptop so this is really weird.
November 1st, 2008 at 8:57 amHi,
I’m having problem with usb flash drive in my LAN network - XP and Vista both. when I try to plug into usb port. It does not show in window explore.I go to check in device manager driver is already installed. I right click on the tast bar unknown message. when I change in another user account. usb working and show on the window explore. Is it problem with user network account or anything can fixed for this problem. but if I change into administrator account or another account USB is fine on window explore. only this account can’t see USB.
many thanks
November 11th, 2008 at 2:05 pm@Ansel & Helpdesk
November 11th, 2008 at 3:07 pmIt seems that the cause was the account login which could not see the USB drive have limited access. You could either upgrade the account to some Windows user group that have access to additional system resources plugged on a USB port or another way is to set the security access policy to allow everyone access to external device such as USB port.
Hi,
November 29th, 2008 at 3:14 amlate, I know, but I’ve just found this site and I have a similar problem. I bought an external HD kit and inserted my Travelstar 20Gb into it. It was recognised ans mass storage (safely remove hardware in the sytem tray), but didn’t appear in Explorer. I followed your advice and a wizard came up, whereupon it led me to partition and format the disk. When done, I could see it in explorer.
I unplugged the drive and plugged it back in.
I now get the icon warning me that a usb 2.0 device is in a slower port, but I do not get the safely remove hardware icon, it does not appear in the computer management window and it no longer appears in Explorer.
What has happened and can I still get to use it ?
thanks.
Well, after a couple of reboots. it appeared and has ever since. - weird.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:43 pmI put the Travelstar drive from a dead laptop into a USB console and plugged it into an XP PC. Windows found the drive and installed it. Device Manager says its working properly. Disk management sees it, but claims that it is FAT (as opposed to NTFS as my other drives are) and does not assign it a volume label. It also refuses to assign it a volume label. It does not show up in explorer. Any suggestions on how to recover the data on the drive?
December 12th, 2008 at 1:27 amJust type the next available drive letter in the explorer’s adress bar. This allows you to see the contents of your external drive, it doesn’t solve the problem though…
December 17th, 2008 at 11:24 pm