Windows 10: External drive not responding ,no drive letter

I was attempting to clone my windows 11 laptop from a HDD to a SSD and I don't know what's happened and how to fix it, I want to format it so I can attempt a clone again.Please any suggestions????

:)

 

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.

 

WD external drive letter change

Hi @WilliamSlessor!

I'm sorry to hear about the confusion with the external drive. What I would suggest is to go in Disk Management and try to reassign the letters on both drives with a third one, and then go back to the original letters. For instance - change the G:G: drive to
M:, and then reassign it as G: again.

You can follow the steps described in this KB article:

http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=T1tsut

Hope this helps and let us know how it went.

 

External Hard Drive "is not accessible"

Hi Ridhwan,

Sorry for the delayed response. Let me continue to assist you further.

The issue here could have been due to fact that the Drive I:\ is encrypted or a flush drive. This forces the computer to not recognize the format and displays the error message. I suggest here to follow the steps below and check if it helps.

• Press Windows Key + letter 'X.'
• Choose 'Disk Management.'
• Right click on the External drive and select 'Change Drive letter and Path names.'
• Rename the drive letter i.e. remove letter I and say you replace it with letter
  J.
• Restart the computer and check the issue status.

Hope this helps. Please reply for further queries on this.