[Windows 10] External USB Hard Drive Not being recognized

[mr_han_solo]

Upgraded to Windows 10 Home last night on my laptop (Sony Vaio Flip 15) and was wanting to pull some files off of my 1TB External Drive (Rocketfish 3.0 USB RF-HD3025 Enclosure). Was working before the upgrade on Windows 8.1 Home.

 

I want to the device manager and the disk itself shows up. It's also shown in the Devices page. However, it does not show up in Windows Explorer, so I'm unable to access my files. The drive also shows up in Disk Management, however, when I go to "Initalize" it says there is an I/O error.

 

Plug the drive into my mac and it works fine I can also open Windows 10 in Parallels and the drive shows up fine, so I know it is compatible with Windows 10.

 

Just wondering if anyone has any ideas on how to get it going.

 

Thanks,

 

Han

[Mindovermaster Moderator]

Change the letter on the USB drive.

[+BudMan MVC]

"when I go to "Initalize" it says there is an I/O error."

 

That sure would not of been a good idea if you wanted data off of it..

[Jose_49]

Could it be a driver that needs to be reinstalled?

[U Betcha]

I registered to this forum only to post a solution for you. I had the same issue and I just worked something out.

1. search for Computer Management and run as administrator

2. go to Storage -> and select Disk Management and wait until your disk list populates. you will see all of the disk drives connected to your computer. Notice that the disks with a drive letter are the ones you are able to see in File Explorer. The disks that do not have a drive letter are the ones not visible in File Explorer - hence, in your case.

3. Right-click on the disk you want to show in File Explorer and select Change Drive Letter and Paths...\

4. Click Add... and keep the first selection "Assign a drive letter"... the system will automatically assign a drive letter. Use the assigned drive letter and click OK. You will now be able to see this disk in File Explorer.

Repeat steps 3 and 4 for any additional external USB drives that you can't see in File Explorer.

Do NOT make these drives Active. You should only have the OS drive as active.

 

[awindy]

After installation of Windows 10, all my camera devices conected with USB have the problem that I can't access the USB drives/SD cards. The drivers seem to work fine and the camera(s) show in 'Device Manager'. I can't do what U Betcha is suggesting - assign a drive letter to the removable disk. The partition is shown as removable drive without a drive letter in 'Disk Management'. If I right click the partition and click 'Change Drive Letter and Path...' I get the message 'The system cannot find the file specified' from Virtual Disk Manager. It is possible to change the drive letter of all my other drives. Any ideas?

[Number-1]

Not sure if this will work for your camera but it works on my Android phone. Try going to developer mode in your camera & switching USB configuration from MTP (Media Transfer Protocol) to something else & then back. 

[xendrome]

Uninstall all of the USB controllers from device manager, it's probably going to cause your mouse/keyboard to freeze up on one, so I would recommend installing like Teamviewer on your system, then doing it from another system via the network/internet. Then reboot the system, let it redetect everything.