Windows 10: I can't find my external drives

I am still running Windows 10 Pro on my Lenovo computer and after the last update I can no longer find either of my external drives. One is a Western Digital 80 gb and the other is a Dell 1 tb drive. I have a lot of information stored on these two drives and would like to know how to get them back. I have checked all of the connections and they seem to be fine. I don't know what else to do so some help would be greatly appreciated.

:)

 

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.

 

External Hard Drive

Hi John,

We suggest that you try the troubleshooting steps below:

• Open your External Hard Drive file in File Explorer.
• Type the name of the file you want to search on the search box and click Enter.

The file will show up in Search Results and you will be able to move it to the correct folder.

Let us know if you need further help.

 

External drives using true Sata connection?

While I did not choose the route of using an external case+usb drive, I appreciate the responses as I now understand what to look for if I need a cheaper alternative to making use of an old internal drive.

Related to this query was my decision between external drives and a NAS box.

The results are here
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/t...comment-or-suggest.205283/page-2#post-3173519