Windows 10: Windows 11 wants to initialize older external USB drives that already contain files.

I have a new Windows 11 computer Alienware Aurora R14 Intel i7 and multiple external USB hard drives typically 1-2T WD My Books containing files and back-ups. I would like to have these files available, but have not yet been able to get Windows 11 to provide access to them. Windows senses when a drive is connected but does not bring the drive up in file explorer. Device Manager sees the drive under "Disk drives" as "WD My Book 1140 USB Device", but when I click on "Disk Management" it brings up an "Initialize Disk" dialog box and shows the drive as "Disk 2 Unknown Not Initialized" and a ri

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External drive

Hi Richard,

There are several factors that can cause your external drive to not read DVDs even though the system is recognizing the device. This could be caused by a driver that needs to updated or corrupted files. For us to resolve your concern, kindly answer the questions
below:

• Just to confirm, the device that is not working properly is a external DVD optical drive?
• Were there any recent changes or updates installed on your computer?
• Have you tried to plug the external drive to a different port on your computer?

As a initial recommendation, we suggest that your run the built in troubleshooter in Windows 10. Kindly refer to the steps below:

• Type “Troubleshooting” in the Search bar and press Enter.
• Click on “View All” in the top left corner.
• This will display the list of troubleshooters which are built-in in the computer. You can click on
  Hardware and Devices from the list and you can run the troubleshooter.

This will check for common errors that affect hardware on your computer and attempts to correct them.

We look forward to your response after completing the steps.

 

File History of files on external USB harddisk drive

Hi,

I have a external harddisk connected to my pc using USB. This drive contains personal files which I want to add to file history. I simply want that everytime I connect my external harddrive to my pc, that file history backs up the files on it to a location
on the network. How do I do that?

* I have file history working for files on an internal harddrive

* I did add my external harddrive to the Documents library

* I tried adding the folder on the external harddrive using the "Add a folder" using the windows 10 settings. But the folder seems to dissappear from the list after a while.

Another detail: the disk is encrypted using DiskCryptor. Everytime I connect the drive windows says it has to be formatted. When I mount the drive by providing the key to DiskCryptor the drive becomes a valid one.

 

Can't Access Either of My External Drives After 14393

Hi Michael,

To better assist you with your concern, I would like to ask if you're getting any error messages when accessing your external drives? If yes, can you provide us with the exact error message?

As an initial troubleshooting, we suggest you to follow the steps below:

• Go to Device Manager.
• Click on USB Mass Storage.
• Right click on your USB, and then click on Update Driver Software.
• Once done, check if you can access your external drives.

Regards.