I have spoken to several people about this issue and each one gave me a different reason but none had a fix. Here's the problem. I've been using a Simple Tech external drive to save photos on. I'm running a PC,Windows7. When I go to "my computer" the drive letter is no longer there.
When I check it in my device manager it shows up and says it's in working order. Any suggestions?
Sometimes the drive letter (A:, B:, C:, etc..) gets changed or is assigned to another device. Do you have a flash drive (jump drive, thumb drive) inserted in one of the USB ports ? If so, I am guessing that it is using the drive letter of your external drive. I am not that familiar with Win 7, but I know that in Win XP, you can use the control panel --> Administrative Tools --> Computer management to change the letter of a particular drive. Hope this helps.
Had this happen before, 2 times.External HD's and me don't seeem to work together. I was able to use a program that found the HD and then allow me to move the data. DON'T USE that drive again until you format it or the issue will usually come back. Next time it may not ne able to be recovered.
I used a program called stellar-phoenix. http://www.stellarinfo.com/partition-recovery.htm
It finds the missing drive. You can try first then purchase for under $50.00
I have a place down the street from me that will recover data like that for about $50.00. Of course tyou would have to send the HD to them. PM if you want the name. I hate external drives!
Smitty605 wrote:
Sometimes the drive letter (A:, B:, C:, etc..) gets changed or is assigned to another device. Do you have a flash drive (jump drive, thumb drive) inserted in one of the USB ports ? If so, I am guessing that it is using the drive letter of your external drive. I am not that familiar with Win 7, but I know that in Win XP, you can use the control panel --> Administrative Tools --> Computer management to change the letter of a particular drive. Hope this helps.
+1 for this reply. Try this first.
In Win7 - Start>>Control Panel>>Adminstrative Tools>>Computer Management>>Disk Management
When Disk Management is open, you will see your computer, along with any partitions you might have and any storage devices (External HD, USB flash memory, etc) connectede to your machine. You can change the drive letters for any of the storage devices. Caution - I would not reccomend that most people change the drive letters for internal hard drives. This could cause issues with your operating system.
To change a drive letter on a storage device, right click on the storage device, and select "Change drive letters and paths".
Good luck - Systems guy during the day (and frequently during the night)
Thank you for the suggestions. Unfortuneatly it still did not work. I even tried removing the drive from the external case (just in case there was a usb issue) and plugging it into a sata drive slot inside the computer and the same problem occurred. It recognized that I added a drive and it sees it in the device manager but when I go to the drive manager it shows the device but says that it has not been initialized. I suppose I could do that but my intrest is in retreiving my documents, not saving the drive.
Jeffries, I tried the recommended software and it was able to recover a few of the files but the majority of them just showed up as a numerical sequence in the preview window. (looks like locations code on the drive disc)
