Comments on: USB External Drive Does Not Show on Windows Explorer

By: vinarja

vinarja — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 14:43:34 +0000

Thanks man, it worked !!!

By: Richard Milward

Richard Milward — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:16:53 +0000

Just found this MS note that explains it:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/297694
Wish I’d known this months ago! :-/

By: Richard Milward

Richard Milward — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:10:46 +0000

Had a similar problem on XP at work. Server was assigned to E:, and flash drive seemed to be recognized (got the “bing-bong”) but did not appear in WinExplorer. Changed server mapping to drive Z:, and then flash drive showed as E:. XP apparently has problems distinguishing between locally-attached drives like flash, and network drives. Check your drive-letter assignments!

By: Jerry W

Jerry W — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:15:10 +0000

It worked – beat advice I have recieved in a long time

Thank You !!

By: milan

milan — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:50:19 +0000

Hello,
I got the same problems of not showing my usb drive in windows explorer and all drivers (C: & D: drive)are not shown in disk management console. I think it may be due to virus so please any one have solution for this, it will be appericiated
thanks

By: giannaros

giannaros — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 16:24:34 +0000

Just 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…

By: JimL

JimL — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:27:52 +0000

I 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?

By: Graham

Graham — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 09:43:15 +0000

Well, after a couple of reboots. it appeared and has ever since. – weird.

By: Graham

Graham — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 20:14:36 +0000

Hi,
late, 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.

By: tony

tony — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:07:33 +0000

@Ansel & Helpdesk
It 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.

By: Helpdesk

Helpdesk — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 07:05:57 +0000

Hi,

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

By: Ansel

Ansel — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:57:59 +0000

As 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.

By: Ansel

Ansel — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 01:55:58 +0000

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.

By: Steven

Steven — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 14:34:42 +0000

Hello,
I 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)

By: el Stiko

el Stiko — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 00:36:44 +0000

I’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.

By: tony

tony — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 13:02:40 +0000

@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.

By: sushil

sushil — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 20:02:36 +0000

hi,
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

By: maichrcol

maichrcol — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 18:54:49 +0000

Prefect!!! Thank you!

By: Cece YS

Cece YS — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 01:32:06 +0000

Thank you, Sir!

Your suggestion is working for me. Great!