Windows 10: Cannot access the USB drive, its corrupted or something.

Im not able to access my USB drive data because it wont open. The USB icon on the Windows Explorer is greyed out and when I try to access it, it gives me the following error:When I go into Disk Management, the USB disk shows up with the 'No media' error. The only option is to change the letter assigned but it doesnt do anything.Even trough Command Prompt running chkdsk command, it cant fix it. The clean command cant access the disk and repair command isnt availavble for some unknown reason on this version of Windows.When I did an error checking from Properties, it gives me this error:I've trie

:)

 

External Drive "not accessible"

Hi,

Corrupted USB controller is one of the possible reasons why you are unable to access your external hard drive. We suggest that you follow the troubleshooting steps provided in this

link to resolve the issue.

Should you need further assistance, don't hesitate to get back to us.

 

Bitlocker encrypted corrupt usb drive.

Hi Patriq,

Thank you for posting your question in the Microsoft Community Forums.

Appreciate your efforts to work on this issue.

I can understand the situation must be difficult for you when the Bitlocker encrypted USB drive doesn't work as it should.

Please answer these questions to get more clarity on this issue:

1. Does the USB drive work on a different PC?
   
2. What is the error code or message you get while trying to access the USB drive?
   
3. Do you have the Bitlocker recovery key for the external hard disk?.
   

However, let us follow these methods to ensure that the USB drive gets recognized on the PC. Once this is done then you can use the encryption key to decrypt the drive after which you can access the files on the drive. As there is data on the drive
which is not backed up, suggest you not to format the drive as this action will result in data loss.

Method 1: Plug in the USB drive into another PC to check if the drive gets recognized and if yes, then you can try to access the files in the drive.

Method 2: As you are able to see the drive when you boot under UEFI, suggest you to run check disk to fix any bad sectors on the external hard drive and check if that helps.

Check Disk or Chkdsk.exe is a built-in Windows utility used to check for errors in the disk media and in the file system. The Check Disk utility or ChkDsk.exe checks file system errors, bad sectors, lost clusters, and so on.

Note: While performing check disk on the hard drive if any bad sectors are found on the hard drive when chkdsk tries to repair that sector if any data available on that might be lost.

1. Open Command Prompt in admin mode. Click Start, type ‘Command Prompt’ and you’ll see “Command Prompt” listed as the main result. Right-click that result and choose “Run as administrator”.
   
2. Once CMD window is open, type ‘chkdsk (Your problem drive letter without parentheses): /x. This forces the volume to dismount. Also invalidates all open file handles.
   

Once this is done, restart the computer and see if that makes any difference.

Let us know how it goes.

Regards,

Srimadhwa B

Microsoft Community-Moderator

 

USB Drive Access Permission

Let's try a different approach. Since the updating the driver does not work, see if changing the Security settings on one of the USB drive. Follow the steps below:

• Right-click the USB's drive on File Explorer and select Properties.
• Click the Security tab.
• Select an Owner/User and click Edit.
  
• Check all the options on the Allowed column, select OK and then Apply.

Update us on the result.