Windows 10: Viewing Folders on old hard drives in Explorer via USB connection

I've got a bunch of older hard drives, some SATA and some PATA that I've been trying to view the files on by connecting them with a Sabrent adapter and also a Vantec adapter. I've had spotty results with being able to view the disks in File Explorer. I can usually see the disk in Disk Management and also Device Manager, just not in Explorer. Results are inconsistent at best, and that makes it all that more difficult to troubleshoot. I've been using the Disk Management troubleshooting guide, and the only thing that has worked once from all of that info was unplugging the drive and plugging it back in. I've got a desktop PC and a laptop, both with Win10. I've gone between both of them trying to do the same thing, and again getting inconsistent results. For example one disk will initially work on the laptop, but not on the pc, then the same disk will work on the pc but not on the laptop. I hope that makes sense.


Do you guys have any solid experience with this type of thing? It also get interesting with the IDE drives because of the jumpers.


Anyway, thank you for any input.

:)

 

exterior hard drive usable?

Hi,

Thank you for posting in Microsoft Community.

I suggest you to follow the below steps and check if it helps.

• Plug USB hard drive into old computer.
• Open File Explorer (Win+E) and open the USB drive.
• Open another File Explorer window and open your documents folder.
• Drag files to the USB drive.
• Move drive to new computer.
• Drag files to their new homes in the matching documents/pictures/videos/whatever folders you use to organize.

Please let us know if you have any further issues. in uploading/ transferring data.

Thanks.

 

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Some suggestions

 

Unable to connect USB Hard Drives to laptop

After having connected a
Sisun HDD docking station to my Sony Laptop , Windows Explorer refuses to recognise any USB hard drive (although other software such as a disk utility can) and I am therefore unable to save files to these drives. Windows does recognise some USB pen drives
but larger HDD are not recognised. To date, I have;

• Uninstalled the USB controllers through Device manager (forcing Windows to reinstall them on reboot); and
• Run both the WinUSB and DeviceDiagnostic software to no avail.

I'd rather not do a clean reinstall of Windows as I am unable to backup my files. Any other suggestions?