Windows 10: Restore external disc drive on Windows 10

The D drive I've been using to play discs on an external player has suddenly vanished without trace. How can I restore it, please?

:)

 

external disc drive

I have an external disc drive which my laptop recognizes once plugged in. However upon selecting the external disc drive (D) and inserting a cd nothing happens and I cannot name the cd in the drive, open it or upload it. It's obvious that I'm missing
something and require technical help. Anyone with a solution or suggestion? Thank you.

 

Free hard drive backup/restore program?

I am looking for a free (freeware) program that will back up and restore a hard drive. I'm looking to clone a few external hard drives. If the program will backup the used space instead of the whole drive this will be awesome! Thanks for any suggestions.

 

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.