Windows 10: I can't access my USB drive.

This is the first time it happened. Basically, I tried opening my drive through explorer and tried opening a project from another app from the drive, but I got a pop-up that says I need to 'format' the disk in the drive first. I have some projects in there i've been working on. I tried searching what happens if I format a drive and uh, it is just what ive heard but I lose all my data. But here is what happen in the past few days that might just relate to what just happen to my drive. One day, I started my pc when my pc decides to scan my D: drive. I was confused at first but i left it for it t

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Accessing a Hard Drive...

...from a dead laptop.

My girlfriend's laptop recently s**t the bed, and she has a lot of photos she would like to retrieve from it. I used a USB to IDE cable to try, but it's a no go. Her drive has Windows XP Home on it, and my system has Win7 x64. The computer recognizes the drive, but it wants me to initialize it, which I think may format it.

I don't know if it's formatted FAT32 or NTFS. Are there any suggestions on accessing the drive to pull all this data off of it?

 

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.

 

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.