Find Your Missing USB Drive on Windows XP
Have you ever plugged in a USB drive or any external device with a hard drive and wondered why you cannot see it in My Computer?
More than likely the cause is that Windows renamed the drive to a letter that is already in use. This will happen if you have several card readers, thumb drives or external hard drives attached. It will also happen if you are on a network and have mapped drives.
To find the drive and then rename it, you’ll want to right-click on My Computer and select Manage.
From the Computer Management screen, select Disk Management.
In this window you should see all of your connected physical drives, their format, if they are healthy, and the drive letter.
In this instance I am going to change the drive letter of my Lexar USB drive. Right-click on the drive in the list, and from the resulting menu select “Change Drive Letters and Paths…”
Click on Change so we can change the drive letter. You might notice that you can select Add, which would let you mount the drive into a folder if you wanted to. We don’t want to, so just click Change.
Select a new drive letter from the drop down list, preferably the one that you usually use for this drive.
Click Yes on the confirmation screen and you are done
If you have auto play enabled, you will get the normal pop up dialog asking what you want to do.
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I am a tech for a local high school. we just got some new computers that had a muticard reader in them. sweet eh? well heres the problem. all the students get a networked drive, the networked drive takes H: , but before that gets set.. the muticard reader takes H: so i had to manualy change 40 computers muticard readers drive letter to the zxy..
And this is what i did. Glade someone posted this for other people. its a good thing to know.
While this is a good article, it does not live up to its title. A better fitting title could rather be something like “How to change drive letter of USB Drive in Windows XP”.
As explained in the article, the drive letter is NOT missing; it’s just assigned another drive and IS visible.
The current title should rather explain what to do when the usb drive is connected, appears in the Safely Remove Hardware list, but no drive letter is assigned to it.
On the plus side, it is a well written step by step guide to what it explains…and…it’s got a date stamp at the end…pheew!…finally a site that doesn’t keep us wondering if we a reading an up-to-date article…thumbs up!!
Raj,
Thanks for the comment. As the editor of this site, I was considering changing the title on this one…. I think your title might have been a better one. =)
A good article.
However… I have an external USB drive that connects and is visible on a win2k machine. The first time I attached it to a winxp machine, the drive was visible. Now when re-attached to winxp, the drive is not visible to windows explorer.
When I look in disk management I can see the drive but it does not have a letter assigned to it: just the volume name appears and I cannot ‘change drive letter or paths’ since this is not selectable for this drive.
Any thoughts?
@Paul Rafferty:
I had a similar sort of issue. There were 2 USB 2.0 hard drives attached to my HP dv6000 laptop (running XP MCE) and a USB 2.0 hub. When I plugged in a USB memory stick into the hub, it invalidated the drive letter for one of the hard drives and WinXP REFUSES to see that drive. I’ve rebooted, I’ve deleted all the USB entries in the system tree, yada yada, to NO AVAIL.
Interestingly, when I ran an Ubuntu Live CD on a laptop and plugged in that drive, it ran with NO PROBLEMS.
Solution: get rid of Windows! I am switching over to Ubuntu 7.04 with VirtualBox to host my old copy of Windows 2000 to run the few pieces of software I cannot easily replace with FOSS. (primarily Photoshop CS2 and some frame-accurate MPEG editing software)
I end up with the best of both worlds: Ubuntu which seems to Just Work and Win 2000 which XP minus the broken crap and eye candy. I’ve switched over my old T40 laptop and I like it so much that I am planning to upgrade the hardware on my desktop box (HP a1030n) with more memory, better video card and a nice LCD panel and get rid of Windows on that box as well!
Frankly, Windows is no longer worth the pain of its retarded USB manglement. Vista was off the table from the get-go for me so this is just moving up the time table a bit since XP was my last windows OS ever anyway…
Get Ubuntu. It just works.
WHen I bring up the screen you have above I do not see any drives or drive letters. Layout, partition file system, etc is not there.
Man…the whole “get rid of windows” rhetoric is so old and junior-high, Dennis. The reality is we don’t have that option, and most business can’t risk NOT using what the rest of the world does.
Besides, if youwant to get into it…from a business perspective Windows TOC is simply much better than Ubuntu’s, or believe me business would switch like there was no tomorrow. Look at what businesses will do to save 1/2% of their operating costs…they’ll jump through hoops.
So the bean counters have determined the RISK of switching is too great (big costs, retraining users, disruption to business, etc)
you’re using the same lame rhetoric a certain brand of tree-huggers have used for a long time – that since YOU are willing to cross the hurdles of a different approach, EVERYONE should be willing to.
Sorry, that’s not how the world works. Keep on operating with you rhead in the sand-I’ll see you in a few years when I still have job opportunites because I’m wiling to support ANY type of OS.
I’m trying to connect a Connection N&C external drive (RJ45 and USB) to win 2000. While I connect it with RJ45, when I try to set it up by USB, windows cannot recognize it….
I tried rebooting, reformatting, etc without any result…..
Under manager setup the drive does not appear….
Any help??
I have a problem with my Maxtor 6 external drive in that it “lost” it’s drive letter designation. It appears in my hardware listing (and I’ve uninstalled and reinstalled). The Plug and Play installation seemed to work but it does not appear on my list of drives. I don’t know if the drive itself went bad or it is a Windows XP issue. I have since reinstalled Windows XP (was having a whole host of problems) and the missing External Drive problem persists.
Wow. You just helped me solve a department head’s problem! Muchas Gracias!
Thanks man – you just saved my demo (uses a VM on an external drive) which was due in 1 hour…
I’ve manually assigned a drive letter to the USB drive. I can’t see it in Windows Explorer (double-click on My Computer) but I can access it through a command prompt and through Internet Explorer. In Internet Explorer I type ‘My Computer’ in the address bar and it shows the drives, including the USB drive (M:). I have a work around for my situation but not a fix. Anyone have a fix for this?
This title is perfect. I searched for “external usb drive will not mount in windows-xp” to get here. Although I am a highly experienced computer user, the concept of changing the drive letter did not occur to me. The external drive worked fine on two other machines, it just would not mount on my notebook where it is used as a backup device. Like so many other computer problems, I can look back and say, “Well, that was dumb!”
What is still not clear is how the drive letter was “removed” from the drive. How did the drive go from having a letter to having no letter. I don’t leave it on or connected most of the time. Whenever I plug it in and turn it on, it mounts. This time, it would not mount. All of a sudden, no drive letter. The answer says that “Windows renamed the drive to a letter that is already in use.” I had not considered that Windows was as dumb as that.
THANKS! HOW-TO GEEK
THANK YOU!!! That was EXACTLY what I needed to know!
On the subject of the USB external hard drive that Windows did not recognize in Explorer and that the Computer Management, Disk Management would not allow you to assign a drive letter, I have a possible fix.
Following the instructions above, right click on the drive in the lower half of the screen, rather than the name of the drive at the top half of the screen (my USB drive did not appear in the upper half). Next select Partition. The wizard will then walk you through partitioning the drive and will allow you to add a drive letter. When complete, your drive will show up like any other hard drive.
One consideration is that the above process may remove any data on the drive. For me it didn’t matter because the drive was new and blank anyway.
Sir:
Saying “thank you” isn’t enough to thank you. I’m bery much obliged getting yr help from http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....indows-xp/.
I was going to format and re-install e/thing from the scratch. Yr trick simply save me time, at least 3/4days. This article is very easy to follow and detailed. Long live yr website. Long live the creators of this site.
Sabir
Found your information on the first search. Well written, easy to understand, and now it makes sense why this would happen in an environment where drive letters change from time to time. THANKS for the help in solving the missing USB drive letter!
Connecting to Disk Manager service…
(This program is not responding)
Well, now I’m screwed.
Nice, that was exactly what I needed. I was going insane with this problem.
ok how do i do that in windows ME
I’ve read through all of these comments, and am still without a solution. I installed a Seagate 250GB external hard drive. At purchase it was partitioned as one large 232GB partion, which WinXP Pro would not recognize. I repartitioned it to an E: drive of 122GB and an F: drive of 110GB. In Disk Management both of the drives appear, both in the upper and lower parts of the window. E: says Healthy (Active) and F: says Healthy. They are, of course, formatted NTFS.
The problem is that I cannot find these drives via any method other than Disk Management. In Explore, I only show C: and D: (DVD). Have I done something wrong here? What more must I do to make my system recognize those drives?
I should also have mentioned that this external drive is via a USB port, and is direct, not through a hub.
This is weird. Suddenly, with no action on my part, both of the newly partitioned drives appear in Explore, and I am able to backup files to them. I thank anyone (in advance) who might have considered an answer to my problem. It is now resolved.
I took a drive from a defunct Mac laptop and put it in a USB2 box bought off eBay with some drivers; XP found the drive and installed Microsoft drivers as a “Generic USB Disk USB device”. However it doesn’t appear in Explorer nor does the disk management technique show it either. I’m assuming that it’s a functioning drive as it was installed, but am I wrong? Ultimately what I want to do is build a system on this and use it to boot from, but right now all I want is to “see” the drive and format it. Any help would be appreciated as have all the above suggestions/advice have helped. Thanks.
I tried several times but it’s not working…. can’t make it visible in my computer…someone help me with a working idea!!!!!!!
Your comments resolved a major frustration.
Thanks
Thanks much for this. Microsoft support site did not have any relevant information. I googled it and it led me right to you.
The title is perfect for this by the way. I would not change it. I knew it had installed it I just could not find it. It never dawned on me to go to disk management. Just a reminder that sometimes you need to start with the basics to find the solution.
Nice One! This was a great help with my 2.5″ portable partitioned HDD that was never recognised on my work computer
Does anyone know if there is a way to do this in registry as I don’t have access to disk management at work. But I can use regedit through a little program I have
Thank you for this tip. You just saved my presentation tomorrow at a meeting.!!
I get angry with some folks who manage networks today.
When i did my Novell Network managers Course we were told and had it drummed into us to start at the bottom end of the alphabet (eg Z,X,Y etal) for network drives thus leaving the top end of the alphabet for user attached devices what ever they maybe. All this was back in the 90’s.
If this was a best practice for network managers then this sort of help would not be required by alot of users as whenever they plug in usb mass storage devices they’d “just work” (by grabbing the next letter after the one used last letter used is E add another USB device it grabs F) for the user.
I’ve moved away from MS to Linux (I’ve also moved out of IT as a job) and so i’m not so up todate with MS OS’es as i would otherwise be. I appreciate this howto page as i had done it once before with a card reader but forgot how i did it this page has reminded me. Plus if the IT manager had a clue they’d have network drives mapped to the bottom end to help stop this sort of thing from happening for their users within the corporate.
regards.
On this subject…
I administer a network environment where different users use each machine, but apparently the settings do not stay on the machine, each jump drive attaches differently, so I would have to log in to each machine as each user with thier device to make it work..and thats nearly impossible.
the answer I have given is to plug in the device before they login, it will grab a mapped drive letter and put the data there, but they have to hunt for it since it dosent show it as a jump drive.
Does anyone know of a piece of software or a registry edit to cure this?
I tried this workaround to get my USB stick to be visible in Explorer. I can navigate to it from the command prompt with no problem. If I type ‘My Computer’ into IE, I can get to the device with no problem. It appears that the issue lies within Explorer itself.
I need help! My external HD icon appears in the tray that it is connected, but does not show up in disk mngt or my computer or anywhere. I have tried assigning my cd drives different drive letters so the computer will pick up the 1st available, but no luck. I have a WD 500g external HD with power cord and usb cord. Tried different cords and usb slots.
The title is definitely misleading. A search led me here to resolve my problem, which apparently several people share:
I also have an old internal drive (with data I would like to access) that I have moved to an external housing, and connected to the USB port. Device manager, the USB Plug & Play, etc. identify the drive, and say it is working properly. But Windows will NOT assign a drive letter. This makes the data contained on it inaccessible.
Disk Manager says it is “Online” and “Unallocated”. This happens both on the W2000 Server machine it used to be installed in, and in an XP machine. Using Disk Manager the only option available to assign a drive letter seems to be to partition the drive, but I would assume that this would destroy the data. There MUST be a way to assign a drive letter…but how?
I agree with Douglass. I’ve tried everything from Device Manager to reboot /reinstall and nothing works unless I restart the computer then the computer only reads the external hard drive for 20 mins or so.
Once you’re in drive manager (I’ve re-installed computers where it couldn’t run for some reason that the service was disabled)
and your drive shows up in the bottom (I came here be cause none of my cd/dvd-rom/rw s worked or showed up in the bottom.)
Once those two are met it is easy to change drive letter or mount point as discussed above.
It is also possible to add a drive letter or mount point when windows hasn’t done so for you.
For example:
1: right-click the partition you want below.
2: choose-change drive letter and paths
3: now instead of choosing the drive letter in the list and saying change,
click add
4: choose the drive letter (or browse the mount path)
5: ok
6: confirm
If any one knows why my optical drives (both internals and one external usb) aren’t showing up in either the top or the bottom of device manager I’d be interested.
Michael- Thanks for the tip. I finally have the drive on my desktop and anytime it is used, the folder changes from a regular folder icon to a drive icon. I went through the mess of trying to open the System Volume Information folder and no such luck. I did all the obvious stuff, googled the problem, went a couple of different routes and still never got in it. Even went into safe mode and no dice. Thanks again! J
Just checking back in. I think I solved my problem.
It seems as if it was a case of assigning alternate drive letters to my removable storage devices.
I’m not sure why since the two removable drives I’m using were getting “E:” and “F:” letters usually far enough down to not cause a problem.
I restarted my computer only plugged in one of the drives used the disk management–>right click and used change drive letters to something much further down “N:”. Did the same thing with the other external drive and they both seem to be holding steady for the past day.
I spoke too soon. I awoke this morning to find both o my external drives unaccessible, after disconnecting and reconnecting both, the drive letters again are not being assigned. When I go to disk management the volumes aren’t there either.
Thanks for the well-written tip! ‘Saved me a bunch of headaches recovering some old mp3s. This site rocks (for geeks, anyway)!
~Lance
Superb fix!
Good fix – and do not change the title, it came top of my google!
I was almost there – in Computer Management under Removable Storage, but the properties for the “missing” USB Drive just lists the drive letter as “Unknown”. If it had listed it as the conflicting drive letter I would have realised the problem.
In my case the persistance of the drive letter allocation was unexpected e.g. plug in two usb drives when only one drive letter is available, one stick gets “lost” = allocated the drive letter of the first network drive and is therfore not visible. But suprisingly after removal and re-insertion of just that drive it does not get the free drive letter, XP persists with the previously allocated letter so it remians lost for ever!
I am trying to connect my Ipod cord to a port and while it once worked it no longer does??
I did get error messages about it not being a 2.0 port but it is and also something about a j drive
other plug and play things work in the same ports
Thanks for flagging up a common -but often misunderstood-problem in networked environments…as you say, XP hides the USB flash drive letter when the drive is inserted on an already-booted network – if the flash drive is inserted BEFORE booting on to the network it will invariably be recognised…but this is impractical usually.
There is a neat and useful program – USBDLM – here at http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html which cures this problem and runs as an OS “Service” to avoid problems of no-Administrator rights etc. It also runs automatically each time the system is booted up without the need for tedious repetitive configuration of individual drives. The program’s “.ini” file can be modified to particular requirements if needed. Note that the Service needs to be started for the first time by clicking on the Start command icon within the unzipped folder which itself is just copied into the C:\Program Files directory.
The missing drive letter title was perfect for me. I saw and heard XP discover the Lexar Jump Drive, but couldn’t see it in Explorer. The Tutorial worked perfectly for me and was a real time saver.
BTW, this is what I Googled and this site came up #7.
“USB Jump Drive not showing up in Explorer”
Thanks very much for taking the time to do this!!!
I have the same deal … my C and my external show in disk manager but the ext has no letter. In the bottom of the screen BOTH drives are shown as drive 0. It’s like the some how got combined. They both show even after removing it and restarting….
I’m still having the same conflict.
I’ve figured out by trial and error it specifically has to be a conflict between my iPod 30 Gig video and a Seagate removal hard drive. They both work fine on their own when plugged into USB ports.
I’ve tried the drive letter trick many times, without any success. I now believe there may be some problem with how my processor handles the USB connections. I was plugging the external drive to the USB port in the rear of the computer, iPod to the front. Now I’ve tried plugging it into the USB port in the rear of the machine BELOW where the external hard drive is plugged in.
It seems to be working.
THANKS! you are great!!
Easy to find my USB with your directions
Bob
Thanks!
thanks guys. i really solved the problem, that is, using internet explorer…
Perfect quick solution to an annoying problem. THANKS!
Windows XP SP2
Trying to add external drive – USB
Drive shows up in Computer Management as Disk 3 – says the drive is online and health – active.
Problem is the option to change drive letter is greyed out.
Any ideas?
some added info:
It is a drive from an old computer FAT32 – I used them same external case and same drive on another WIndows XP SP2 computer to backup some of the files but now I have a new computer and want to do the same thing but now this problem.
Losing the data is not an option.
Brilliant. Since I’m using several hard drives in several caddies and swapping them over, they… well, anyway, I decided not to assign it a letter when I formatted it. That was the problem! EXCELLENT. I’ve read some of the mails critiquing the title of the article, and as one is not averse to critiquing mismatches between label and content, I should be more sympathetic to your critiques. But for me, it did what it said on the tin. EXCELLENT. This was my first trip, but I shall be back for more solutions!
Thanks John! We certainly aim to please!
Well if you aim to please…. I can not format this drive, no reason to format, can’t loose the data, it should work just fine but doesn’t.
Robert, I would recommend taking this issue to our Forum. We have a lot of great knowledgeable readers there! This way we can get more in depth into the exact issues related to your problem and serve you better!
I bought a new plug and play flash drive that those not come with a disk.
I’m using it already until it started reporting that i should insert a disk before i.e if I try to open it
Please i need a solution to this problem.
Saved my life! Now I see my OCZ Roadster 1GB again!
Regards
Sverrir
hey there,, having same problem with drive E missing in windows XP. there one day, gone the next,, no one and I mean no one so far can tell me what has happened to it, other than its gone dude. had someone send me a disc to repair it,, how am I to repair it when it is the drive that runs the disc etc. all my documents etc on disc are thru drive E.. am sitting here with a double drive computer and the one I truly need is down,, suggestions ? thanks a bunch..
Sarge,,, Semper Fi
Thank you very much! This solved my problem.
I have had the “tone but no drive show up problem” for a long time. Some solutions are simple but until smart people like you show us, well thank you.
Great job thanks always wondered why it did that on Windows XP my old Windows does not have a problem but XP does.
Strange one for me could not figure out where that drive was hidden.
This windows xp is driving me crazy! I have a pavillion hp with no recovery disc and Hp will not give me one. You know they loaded the pavillion 9905 with a secret partition so it will recover it self. Well I am missing files; ststem32\kernel32.dll, system32\wsock32.dll, system32\user32.dll, system32\ntoskrnl.exe, system32\drives\etc\hosts can anyone help me please!
Even if I had the files I don’t know where to put them when I do get them can you help? Thanks
thanks allot, it helped e fix my problem in 2 seconds – very easy to follow instructions
A good article, Thanks a lot .This article really helped me to slove my problem very quickly with step-by-step pictures. Once agin thanks to the author. –suresh
Thank you so much!! God bless you for posting this article!!
Thank you for the great tips, and the time you toook to create this.
One note that may also help: If you (readers of this post) have installed a brand new or unformatted disk in a USB enclosure, you will need to intitalize the drive first. You will know that you need to do this because instead of showing as “Healthy” (as in the screen shots above) the dirve will show “Unitialized/Unallocated.”
You can remedy this following the steps shown above, except that you’ll first click the **LEFT** side of the disk manager display instead of the right side. In the above illustration, you would see “Disk 1 Unitialized” on the left (underneath Disk 0, which is your primary HDD) and “Unallocated” with diagonal hash marks on the right. Click the **left** side, then choose “Initialize Disk” on the **main menu** and follow the steps.
BE SURE YOU ARE SELECTING THE CORRECT DISK DURING THIS PROCESS– A WRONG CHOICE HERE AND YOU CAN TRASH YOUR PRIMARY DRIVE.
Once you’ve initialized, click the **right side** area of your new drive (again, in Drive Manager/ Disk Management) and choose “Create Partition.” Follow the steps–it will automatically assign the next available drive letter–and then choose NTFS/ Quick Format (unless you really want to format the entire drive…which takes a while.)
You’re set to go, and the dirve will be recognized in the future. If not, you now know what to do.
I admit, I didn’t read all the above posts, but it should be known that this fix also will mount a USB drive when if safe mode. This can be helpful when troubleshooting a computer with viruses and/or spyware/malware. The only difference for this is when you mount the drive, you have to select a totally different letter than what it shows it as in Disk Management. Hope this is helpful!
Good call Jeremy!
Nice fix. But do you have anything a little more long term solution. In most corporations users don’t have permission to follow the instructions. Some users are in positions that require them to use usb drives from several different people. Network Admins are constantly asked to “change a drive letter”. Will microsoft ever fix this problem?
m-
There are a hundred answers to your question…
) My favorite is this one: Corporations that *require* users to use multiple USB drives can elect to provide the permission to *those specific users* to follow these instructions. I’ve been in more than one corp environment where I had a day-to-day login on my laptop (that would have prevented me from accessing disk manager) and another that gave me local admin rights so that I could do stuff like this *when I needed to*. Of course, I had to be certifed as an admin first. If corp policy does not extend this permission case-by-case (or by user group) then in effect the policy is “bring your USB drive to a network admin so that he/she can look at it before it gets hooked to the corporate network.”
d
@ Dave … “then in effect the policy is “bring your USB drive to a network admin so that he/she can look at it before it gets hooked to the corporate network.” …
You are correct! This is the best policy in my opinion. Who knows what kind of crap could be on an end users flash drive? It certainly creates a headache for IT to have to go over each one on an individual basis (depending on company size) … however … if a rogue virus or malware attack is unleashed on the network … I will take a couple minute inconvenience any day!
@ Dave and mysticgeek,
I respectfully disagree with both of you. I don’t believe any user should have to open up disk managment to change the drive letter of a USB device just because the OS is incapable of checking to see if a drive letter is in use. It should not matter weather or not the drive letter is being used by a local device or mapped drive. “In use” should mean “In use”.
Thanks mate. You helped me out.
cheers.
My problem is that with a Networked drive already assigned to letter F (which for reasons I won’t go into here, can NOT be re-lettered), the fix you describe is a multiple-step workaround which must be repeated every time the Flash drive is re-inserted.
Isn’t there any way to make Windows PERMANENTLY assign a drive letter to the USB Flash drive port for non-technical people who need to be able to just plug in their flash drives without going through half a dozen steps to find the drive?
Hey,
Wondering if you could help, if I change my external HD from Not Initialized to Online will I loose
all the current data on it??
Thanks
Marty,
I wouldn’t think so. What kind of Drive is it? Also what OS are you running?
Brilliant – XP would not recognise my second USB device.
In Disk Management, I created a new partition which allowed me to assign a different letter to this drive.
However, it was a blank HD which was reformatted as part of the process. I’m not sure if you can avoid reformatting or not.
thanks a lot it helped me to finish off my work and go home early.
cheers
Jothi
@ Sonny Breaks … you shouldn’t have to reformat the HD.
@ Jothi Thanks for your comment! I am glad you were able to go home early!
Guess you never got around to changing that title, eh?
If you can access your USB drive under DOS but does not show up in Windows Explorer even if you can assign a letter drive in Disk management, check for the following file in windows/system32 directory: newdev.dll
Get it from another XP computer and that should solve any device mounting problem.
Also use the event logger under control panel– administrate tools – to find out what does wrong with the device mounting.
Hope that helps!
Your article solved my frustrating problem on my work computer. The IT department set the E Drive to some network drive and hence my computer though recognizes the external hard drive/USB sticks and installs the driver, never used to let me browse the files inside them.
After reading the article, you solved the problem. Now I can use all my external hard drives, USB jump drives and card readers from my computer.
Just want to leave a thank you note.
Thanks!!!
I have a related problem. I formatted my C drive (Windows XP Home SP2) and now I can’t see my second hard disk on the Windows Explorer. I can see it in Disk Management as Disc 1 Local Disc Correct (Active), but with no letter assigned. I right-click it and the Change Letter is shaded and can’t be accessed. Formatting not an option. Help!
Windows sux. You’d think they would have fixed this by now.
Hey,
i just wanted to add a comment to this long entry of replies. I had the same issue and could not fix it for anything. Finally I uninstalled every single usb controller and anything related to usb in device manager. then i did a rescan and everything installed back including the drive and this time it assigned a drive letter.
jsut thought id share that with everyone.
Windows handles drive letters through the Mount Manager. See MSDN http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-.....02377.aspx for an explanation. Thus missing drive letters for external drives (I’ve seen this happen with both 1394 firewire and USB drives) are likely attributable to a bug (feature!!!) of this system driver (c:\windows\system32\drivers\mountmgr.sys).
THANK YOU!
This has been bugging me for weeks, and I knew it had to be something simple.
I hav a external western digital 250gb drive which is set plug and play, turned on windows xp / my computer NO drive, But in divice manager / disk drives it appears….Now seeing her what you said under computer managment / disk managment o the right upper window nothing their about the external drive But below in the gray area it is listed their as disk 2 ???? hummmmmmm…
i did formate the drive using a file from western digital and was again working EVEN tho i lost 150gb of info. was using the external drive again for a week or so having maybe another 30gb back on it and now it won’t come up in my computers, but as said above i do see in the areas explained above ;-( HELP…thanks so much appericating any n all to solve the problem hopefully not playing the formate game again and getting the same results….
This didn’t work for me, but I found another possible solution. I went to “Device Manager” and uninstalled the drive (from Disk drives) and the USB Mass Storage Device (from Universal Serial Bus controllers) then restarted my computer. It detected and reinstalled my USB drive and it works fine now.
Hey thanks Martin BUt NO go , i followed your advice and did a fresh restart, turned on external, said new hardware was found and the device, so it s their BUT doesn’t load the files or does it show up in control panel as a lettered drive ;-(….
Thanks – it was exactly what I was looking for – the title is just fine too!
The procedure to recover a missing USB drive is straightforward but not obvious: In Device Manager, select View / Show Hidden Devices. Under “Storage Volumes” there will be an “Unknown Device” – this is the missing USB drive. Right-click on it and select “Update Driver”. After a few momements it should then correctly identify the unidentified USB storage volume as “Generic volume” and the USB drive will be assigned the next available drive letter in Disk Management. I’ve seen this problem with 1394 Firewire drives and also with SATA disk drive arrays. Good luck!
This is fine and dandy for those who have the driver either on the software or know where to point it in the right direction, be nice if the application searched the internet but it doesn’t, personally i bought the western digital 250gb external drive from someone who put it in a case and set as plug n play,ive been on western digital site with no luck except i was told that the drive was actually a internal BUT he made it a external, i found this on it , i seen something as of mention to 1st 2nd generation which i would havn’t a clue ;-( i did scroll down to
2nd Generation Serial ATA WD Caviar SE – 7200 RPM: and downloaded Data Lifeguard Tools 11.2 for Windows and applied it , it formated the drive having to lose 150gb of info. but worked fine up until i put about 25gb back on it then it happen again disappeared ;-( it is seen in the device manager / disk drives appearing when i turn the drive on…But still it doesn’t show up in my computer under hard disk drives as it did ;-( if i had another computer id hook it to their and see what happens but don’t at this time , i also did as martin recommended above, and after deleting both, and fresh started it and then plugged in the drive, it said it founded new software and was ready to use But nothing in my computer ;-( so maybe its not being assigned a drive ?? for whatever reason ???..Thanks 2 all responding, hav a gr8 weekend
Thanks… This worked in my case and I caused the problem when I assigned a drive letter to my Buffelo linkstation of “L” and the USB was also “L”.
As soon as I changed the USB to “O” everything showed up as usual in explorer.Why can’ t windows just alert you to the conflect instead of just no show the drive????
Thanks again.
as said i think the person that i bought the drive from set it up as a plug and play, so it would come up as L for me, as if i put one pf my flash memorys in they come up on L\: ….glad it worked for you , thanks for the post.
This problem appears to affect only XP Home and XP MCE. I run XP Pro at the office with “F” as the network drive. When inserting any type of USB storage device XP Pro will assign “E”. However on my home network where I have the previous two XP variants, they will assign “F” to the USB device rendering it invisible. I’ve not seen this problem with Win ME or Vista. My solution was to map the network drive to the “Z” slot.
Also regarding purchasing a new HDD and loading it into an external USB enclosure. I purchased a WD PATA drive and all that was required was formatting. On the other hand I purchased a SG SATA drive and it required to be initialized, partitioned, and formatted.
I am a Network Technician Consultant and I want to say that this is the first time belief it or not that the USB Backup HD did not mount the drive letter where I recongized that Symantec Backup Executive System Recovery did not find the volume letter and been missing backups. You article was so easy and WORKED. Now am able to backup our customer server once again.
Thank you so very much………………
Thank GOODNESS!
I have 3, count em, 3 different USB drives (one of which claims to be a hard drive and floppy drive) plus an MP3 player that my computer sees as another USB drive. Somewhere along the lines, one of the 4 misguided children took someone else’s letter. In the confusion NONE of my USb drives were working.
I was slowly working my way through the ’solutions’ I found on the web, but when they started talking reinstalling Windows, I freaked.
Then I found your web site which had a solution unlike any of the other’s I’d found and it worked like a champ.
I have given each of my drives their own letters and they’re quietly playing nicely right now.
Thank you very much!!
I couldn’t see the drive in Computer Management but (eventually) found it in Device Manager. Reinstalled the driver and now it works.
Ok i Now have a NEW computer Hp Media Center running Vista, pluged in the drive same ole same ole , it won’t come up in my computer BUT it is to be seen, as for trying to see whats up with drive letter won’t allow the option but is is seen in divice manager and so on and so forth,keep in mind in above post it was working just fine on my hp_winXp and 150gb down the road it disappered ;-( so ended up go to Western Dig sight downloading their program mentioned and link in aboved post i believe and it erased EVERYTHING and formatted it so i was back to a CLEAN 250gb drive, then 25gb into it it did it again just didn’t come up, but when trurning it on you could hear how windows sound goes off reconizing the drive BUT nothing in my computer but seen in divice manager as showin above so its their but not their ;-( so when i pluged into new computer same old same ole, haven’t messed with it since im sure if i used the western digital program again it would be working again and clean BUT for how long ??? i haven’t a clue and don’t want to lose more ;-( UNLESS the problem is solved….have a great weekend
After reading some of your comments wot worked for me was going into device manager –> storage device then click view –> hidden. I found my usb device not working, right click then click enable.
mine appears in disk drives and even in propertys it says (This device is working properly)under details tab its where it says property divice discription is not selected…
at the top of the page i went to Computer and select Manage, Computer Management screen, select Disk Management, the drive is labeled
#6, on the right says 232.88 GB unallocated right clicking in that window theri is NOT all the options as their is on the other drives meaning NO option to change drive letter if needed to be…the options are …New simple volume,New spanned and striped are greyed out, and properties and help…as the other drives their alot like 10 choices…..remember it was set as Plug and play if it makes any difference…..at this time im not even using it or racking my brain because i have ran across a fix as of yet…so who know i know if it gets formatted it will work again but not sure if it will be another quick fix and work as it did on the windowsxp and do it again ;-( on the new vista im using ….thanks
Just wanted to say thanks for this article! I was having the exact problem the article describes – my machine has a number of network drives that map through a script at logon, and so I couldn’t figure out why none of my USB drives/sticks/devices were showing up for me to browse! Turned out to be so simple, I should have figured it out myself. But thanks!
Hey, I had a huge problem, and you helped me fix it in record time.
You are the life savior. Turned out to be sooooo simple. I should have figured it out myself. But thanks! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Gr8 Artical. I was worried about the USB icon. But with this artical I got that in mins.
Thnaks
Well glad it work for all of you ;-( , Happy Fathers day to the Dedicated dads, and for all who r dead Beats ,STEP UP 2 the plate n make a change today…
I have read the information regarding the USB jump drive disappearing from my computer. I am afraid to reassign letters because everything is partitioned and it is showing a disk 0 and Udisk, I’m not sure which is supposed to be the USB drive. Can anyone help, I feel completely illiterate. The other jump drive works when plugged in????
Great post – thaks very much. However the disc (which is a hard drive caddy, and which I think was once a MAC formatted disc) is visible, is Healthy, is online, but is noted as a GPT Protective Partition, and you can right clickk to your hearts copntent but the menu remains greyed out – any suggestions????
Thanks! My drive was lost for weeks. Now I have it back.
I have an NEC-3540 external DVD writer in USB 2.0 enclosure. When connected to a system running on windows XP, device manager shows the external drive under USB controllers. However i do not see anything under disk management . I also do find the drive in “My computer”. The USB port on the laptops are ok, as if i connect any other thumb drive they show fine.
The driver details for NEC-3540 does not show any problem. In the system tray also i get a icon to show that the device is connected. I have tried re-assigning the drive letters. It does not help. I have connected the external drive to 3 different computers. All have the same problem.
What could be the issue preventing windows from showing this in My computer as a drive ? Also when i boot the windows XP system with the external drive connected, it will not start. Once i switch off the external drive it would start automatically. The same while shutting down the windows XP system, it would not shut down , till i switch off the external drive.
Any assistance will be highly appreciated.
Thanks
Sudhakar
@Everyone
Please, Please, Please leave your questions on the forum, where you are much more likely to get a response.
http://www.howtogeek.com/forum/
This worked beautifully! Thanks!
This worked great. Thanks.
Thank you! You’re a genius!!
It does not work for me, i tried to change the letter so “x” and remove it and then plug it in but it does not pop up.
Many of my USB sticks are like this, and i don’t know why.
Help me?
@ ITHKS
Look at the other comments here and try what they suggest. e.g. use the event logger under control panel– administrate tools – to find out what goes wrong with the device mounting.
Hope that helps.
A huge tnanx.Simple but saved me from a lot of trouble!!
You have just saved me a lot of time. Was working on a PPT for a training tomorrow! Thank you!
I have a usb drive (120 Gb) which works on my other W2K laptop.
But when connected to WINXP laptop (Compaq EvoN1005v), it sees absolutely NOTHING, neither in the explorer, nor in the Disk Management windows, nor in the “Safely remove peripherals” icon, nowhere !!!
Curiously, the XP laptop sees some Flahdrives and not other flashdrive (particularly my MP3 player so I have to plug it in the W2K laptop and that sucks).
Anyone has a solution please? I’ve browsed all the above answers but found nothing.
I hope people still look at this; I’m having an awful problem!
I just recently purchased a Seagate external hard drive to use as a backup. I’ve had a bad experience with things crashing at bad times, and am tired of it. I used this drive with my laptop running Vista and it works fine, I can reformat; change drive letters, the whole nine yards. However, when I try to back up files from a desktop that is running XP, I cannot find this drive in My Computer. I can see it in the device manager, however when I right click on this drive (be it at the top or the bottom) every option is gray-ed out. I cannot reformat, I cannot change the drive letter, nothing.
I even went as far as to change the drive letter in Vista, making it something that would never have been used on the XP desktop (T:) and still cannot see this external hard drive. I’m not asking for multiple automatic complex back up units … I just want to drag and drop, like a huge flash drive. I need help, because part of my justifying this purchase was telling my girlfriend I’d help back up her files too! Now she’s not liking the idea that I may have to buy another …
Please help!!!
see my article above on how to get a drive letter assigned to your external USB hard drive.
just what I needed…thx!
Thanks man
)
I got my new HDD working thanx to this !!!
Yahoo for school
dear sir
i am using win XP .my problme is desktop icon drop shadows .
i go to system properties > Advanced > performance settings > visual effects > custom > click “Use drop shadows for icon labels on the desktop ” but problme not sloved .i have latest Quick heal antivrus 2008 updated .
i try to differen login it’s working . i am facing these problme sinc last two months now i have to creat new profile and re-configer outlook , etc. for different users.
can i slove these problme without creating new user profile
Though the title is not wrong, in my case, like Raj Moloye (the 2nd person to write a comment to this article), :
“the usb drive is connected, appears in the Safely Remove Hardware list, but no drive letter is assigned to it.”
In the Computer Manager it also appears under the but only as folders, no drive letters assigned. Right -clicking on Removable storage and selecting didn’t change anything. It did not appear as a disk either in Disk Management. No letters assigned to it, so could not re-assign a letter.
After reading through this long list of comments, here’s how I managed to resolve the issue.
Just one more step than described in this article, ..
===========
(Win XP)
In Computer Manager (right-click on a visible drive in file explorer – select )
.- click on Disk Management
if your missing drive shows up there with an existing drive letter, just proceed as this article explains(right-click on the drive and re-assign a letter)
.-if your drive does not appear there, right-click on , in the left pane, and select .
My removable disk then appeared, and of course it was assigned an already assigned letter (my DVD drive’s). I was then able to re-assign a free drive letter as explained in this article.
=============
You might want to try Anthony Maw’s solution (May 1st 2008) also. It probaly works too: (I repeat it here to combine solutions in one comment and save you the search through this long list…in case you started with the latest comment…which I did not
)
Anthony Maw’s solution:
“The procedure to recover a missing USB drive is straightforward but not obvious: In Device Manager, select View / Show Hidden Devices. Under “Storage Volumes” there will be an “Unknown Device” – this is the missing USB drive. Right-click on it and select “Update Driver”. After a few momements it should then correctly identify the unidentified USB storage volume as “Generic volume” and the USB drive will be assigned the next available drive letter in Disk Management. I’ve seen this problem with 1394 Firewire drives and also with SATA disk drive arrays. Good luck!” -Anthony Maw
===============
“The Geek”: You might want to add this “Re-scan disks” step in your article and maybe also add Anthony Maw’s solution, it would then truly live up to its title (ref Raj Moloye’s comment April 2007). Worked for me. Even after disconnecting and reconnecting, and mixing with or without a 2nd USB flash drive. It kept the letter I had assigned to it. Will it eventually cause a problem if all the letters get assigned like this, I wonder…
Thanks
Thanks to you and all the people who commented this article.
Thank you Denis and thank you Anthony Maw. I recently bought a Toshiba 320GB external USB HDD and was getting VERY frustrated. I could see it from WIN XP SP3 disk manager, but not from Windows Explorer. I used Google and tried about five or six different “fixes”–NONE worked until Anthony’s. THANK YOU.
THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH!!!! I thought I had lost family pictures and important files. You have saved my day!!!! Now I can stop blaming the hubby. THANK YOU!!!
Thanks for your easy instructions. After following them, I was able to actually open my USB external hard drive from the Disk Manager. However, it still doesn’t show up on My Computer even after a reboot. In fact, after the reboot, I was back at square one. I had to go in a configure the drive letter again. I have tried EVERYTHING, I think. I’m running XP SP3, downloaded all the updates, the BIOS, I’ve uninstalled all the USB ports and hubs, installed drivers for the hard drive, and who knows what else. My PC won’t recognize ANY USB device. Your page was the only thing that gave me hope since I can now actually access my hard drive. However, I’m still going crazy! Help! This computer recently underwent a clean install from the backup CD’s, so that might help someone give me some ideas.
Thanks for the information; It was helpfull.
I took a Hitachi 40 gb 2.5 inch drive from my wife’s old laptop (Win 2000) and put it in an external USB drive case. WinXP SP3 finds the drive and tells me it’s ready to use, but it doesn’t show in My Computer or Disk Management. I also don’t find it as a hidden device as one person suggested.
When I right click Safely Remove Hardware, the drive shows as Generic USB Device at Location 0. If I uninstall in device manager and reboot, Windows goes through the discovery routine and finds it again, but it simply doesn’t show.
I’d like to reformat the drive for use with XP as an external data drive. I did get one message telling me that drives from Win 2000 often won’t show in XP. No clue on how to make it show up though.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks, it worked for me!
I’m having an issue with a Lexar USB device. I tried to follow the above suggestions, but none of them have worked. The only way I can access my data in the drive is to find it under Disk Management, where it has been assigned a Letter, which is not being used by another device.
If I left click on the device within Disk Managements, and select open, I can access my data.
If I left click on the device and select explorer, it opens explorer and displays my data briefly. On the Folders portion of explorer I can see that I am in an unnamed directory within My Computer. Then almost instantly I am kicked back up into the My Computer directory, and my USB Drive is no where to be found.
The same occurs when I select open from the Disk Management section, and then click on Folders to display where I am on My Computer. Explorer kicks me up to My Computer, and my USB Drive is no where to be found.
So I can access my data, but it’s a nuisance having to go through Disk Management anytime I want to utilize it. Any suggestions?
This advice was very helpful. I had to try several times to get the correct letter for my external drive in disk management, but when I got to E it worked!
Thank you very much for this good guide!
Hey, this is a great ‘how-to’. I was actually wondering if there was another way to do this. I’m trying to get my computer at work to recognize my jump drive, but I don’t have administrative priviledges to access the disk management, so I can’t change the drive letter that way. It used to recognize my jump drive until I had a differant one plugged in to it, then it assigned the drive letter to that jump drive, now I can’t change it back. Any suggestions would be muchly appreciatted.
Pete, it’s simple: ask your IT administrator!
Very Helpful!
My win xp pro does not recognize my maxtor 320Gb HD. It connects via USB, but it appears in my computer as “the one” (the name I gave it some time ago), upon clicking on it, my computer slows to a crawl, and stops responding, other times it responds fine, and I use that opportunity to go to system volume disk management to try and change its drive letter and what do I notice when I click on the volume letter’s drop down arrow, the list starts off on “E” not in “A” as it is supposed to.
Two questions here:
a) Why does my win Xp pro not recognize my HD? It was working before, i have tried on 2 diff computers, 2 diff USB cables, this happened after I installed Motorola V3 software drivers, these installed it said clear log? I pressed yes and apparently some drivers were removed, I have uninstalled this software.
b) Why does the system volume, disk management only display E:-Z: as the only possible drive letter choices, as opposed to displaying A:-Z:?
Thanks, solved my problem!
cheers
How do I find the info about the accession events and actions for a particular volume (Win XP)? I suspect someone’s accessed the system while I was gone and messed with some important files. I want to confirm that and see when, where, what happened, etc. Thanx, (detailed) advice HUGELY appreciated!
Thank you for this website. I thought my computer had a virus because the drive just disappeared completely. You see, I am technologically challenged. What happened was I copied pictures from my home computer on my usb which is the F drive. I went to work plugged it in my work computer and just couldn’t figure out what the world happened to my pictures. It told me there were no pictures to view. Then I realized that my work pc had it assigned to E drive as opposed to F drive. Search on the internet, found this site and wallahhh I could see my pictures. Thank you very much. I printed the instructions in case this happens to my drives again. Hopefully not. Ciao!!!
Hi Thanks for the tip; not finding my flash drive almost drove me to drink! Don’t change the title – I wouldn’t have found this site otherwise.
Just an FYI. We’ve endured this for years. The reason, according to what I’ve read, is that XP does not have the “FIRST DRIVE LETTER” option that Win9x and 2000 offered. So instead of letting you start adding drives at M, for example, your drive letter is simply assigned by the system. This would be all well and good EXCEPT for the fact that XP IGNORES LOGICAL MAPPINGS in favor of local drives.
What this means is, if you have a network with numerous connected or mapped drives–say drives E, F, G, H–Windows XP will ignore them when another device (like USB flash drives) is attached to the system. Ergo, your USB drive “takes” the first perceived available drive letter. That would be Drive E in this example.
We have yet to find a registry hack or other fix to this problem other than that mentioned in this thread.
I can’t even begin to show you my thanks!!! I really appreciate the forum man!!!
I could not see my drive and thought is was the disk, then the USB case, and with this info, solved the problem in less than 60 seconds. Thanks A L O T guys/gals.
The suggestion above is not working for a 10GB drive I have in a USB enclosure. it shows the drive to be healthy, Diagnostics are reported by system but the there is no drive letter. This being the case is there a way to attach to the drive using the same path as the System diagnositcs As I mentioned the drives 3 partitions show all to be healthy. Thanks
If your USB drive is not getting assigned a drive letter, try the solution in my posting above on May 1, 2008
When I connected my USB drive,safely remove hardware appeared in the task bar but I don’t find the USB drive in My Computer ! How can I solve this problem? Some one help me PLEASE…………
Thanks a lot
I wasted 2 hours trying to connect disconnect ,restart etc but I was unable to see USB device in My Comp untill I asked google and found this solution.
Thanks & Regards
Wish i had saw this yesterday, had to format my laptop, ended up losing all my kids photo’s due to my laptop not showing up my flash drive before i formatted, sods law i’d find this after formatting
here goes…
iv got a windows xp but i cannot use my printer or anything else that runs off the usb port.
iv also looked on device manager and i cannot see the usb icon.
iv recently had service pack 3 installed,do you think this could be related with this problem?
please help.
thanks for you time.
so what do you do if you want to acces the drive, but you deleted the patition. and don’t vant to delete files on it ?
i have a problem with my usb hard drive case.conflicting with a hard drive wdc 640 gb)
starngely the usb case is not in conflict with other hard drive I’ve also a 500 giga WDC on my computer
I can only use one of them ( the usb hard drive case or WDC 640 Giga)
by disabling.
Please Help
many thaks in advance
Thank you for posting this. This solved my problem. I didn’t even think to check Disk Management.
Hi
as u have mentioned i tried to change the drive letter but its telling that “The operation on volume is not complete because the partition or volume is not enabled”.. What should i do for this??
Thank you very much!!! I found these instructions extremely helpful in that they explained *why* the problem was occurring and *exactly* how to fix it. I will definitely come here for tech support in the future.
I have 2 Gb Transcend USB pen drive. Unfortunately my usb pen drive does not work and does not show in my computer and also do not show Disk Management area. So plz help me anybody and how to recover it?.
Here’s great one:
depositfiles.com/ru/files/kcnd005tt
Best Windows XP usb flash edition 2009
Wow ! Thanks friend!!! it really helped me to solve the problem
Thanks again !!!!