Windows 10: External drive in Disk Management no longer has drive letter nor a file system listed. Bad...

I have a nonresponsive external drive F: which quit responding after I interrupted an active file transfer C: to F: in Windows copy. The software seemed to hang during 'cancel copying' so I just rebooted my laptop at that point rather than continue waiting. That may have been a big mistake. The drive shows Healthy in Disk Management (DM) as Drive 1, but now the drive letter and file system type are not listed. The drive does not appear in Explorer. The Drive is present in Task Manager but again no drive letter and a weird 1.6 TB size (it is a 4 TB drive) and it states formatted zero (0) MB.


If I right-select the partition in DM, all the usual choices are grayed-out except Help. I followed the suggestions in Help, i.e. trying a new cable, power cycling etc to no avail. At that point it suggested I post here for help from the community. Since the drive shows Healthy I hope to save my files there. Also, if this seems like a good candidate for third party software to 'fix' I'd appreciate any advice in that regard. -glenn

:)

 

help. USB drive isn't assigned a drive letter.

Any usb flash drive I plug into my computer isn't assigned a drive letter. The physical drive shows in the "safely remove hardware" but it doesnt show up in disk management. I have tried to populate the volume thru the safely remove hardware properties window and it does pop up in the list but it doesn't stay there. This isn't a format or assign a letter problem. It's more complicated then that. Maybe one of the services needed for usb drive management was disabled? Suggestions needed. btw external usb harddrives work fine.

 

External disk drive not showing up

Check if the drive is assigned a drive letter.

Press Windows key + X

Click Disk Management

If you see your drive listed there, but no drive letter, right click it

Click Change Drive Letter and Paths

Click Add

Click Assign the following drive letter

Click in the Drive letter list box

Choose a drive letter - try choosing letters near the end of the alphabet

Click OK

Click OK again

If that does not work...

Press Windows key + X

Click Device Manager

Expand Disk drives

Right click the external drive

Click uninstall

Exit Device Manager, restart then check if its detected.

or

Step 1. Press Windows key + R to open the Run dialog

Step 2. Type regedit and press Enter

Step 3. Navigate to the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_Machine > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Services > USB

Step 4. If the USB key does not exist into the list, then create a new key USB under Services. Now create a new DWORD value under the key that you’ve just created

Step 5. Keep the USB key selected and right-click on the blank space at the right pane

Step 6. Select New > DWORD value from the context menu

Step 7.Rename this newly created DWORD value as DisableSelectiveSuspend

Step 8. Right-click on DisableSelectiveSuspend and select Modify

Step 9. Put 1 in Value data field and then click OK

Step 10. Reboot your PC

 

Recover external drive files

What happens when you connect your external drive? Do you get an error message?

Check if the drive is assigned a drive letter.

Press Windows key + X

Click Disk Management

If you see your drive listed there, but no drive letter, right click it

Click Change Drive Letter and Paths

Click Add

Click Assign the following drive letter

Click in the Drive letter list box

Choose a drive letter - try choosing letters near the end of the alphabet

Click OK

Click OK again

If that does not work...

Press Windows key + X

Click Device Manager

Expand Disk drives

Right click the external drive

Click uninstall

Exit Device Manager, restart then check if its detected.