USB hard drives not assigned drive letter after crash

[Terry R.]

I have a 500 gig external USB drive that filled up. I connected an
external 1.5 Tb drive yesterday to copy the contents, and left the copy
procedure to work overnight.

This morning the computer had blue screened. Now when I plug the drives
in, they're identified when I double click on "Safely Remove Hardware",
but no drives are assigned in Explorer. In Disk Management the drive is
listed and the partitions healthy, but right clicking only offers
"Delete Partition".

I've Googled, "external hard drive not assigned a drive letter" and "usb
drive does not show in explorer". One suggestion to use,
"DeleteLowerAndUpperFiltersForUSBOrExternalHardDiskDrive.msi" was a
disaster, as I create backups of the 3 hard drives partitions and on a
reboot, every partition was assigned a drive letter, even though most of
them are hidden, and there wasn't a way to remove the drive letter from
them.

I tried a ERDNT registry restore from yesterday and nothing changed.
Anything else I can do?

Terry R.

 

[R. McCarty]

Was the 2nd external also a USB ? - USB to USB copy is a very slow
and error prone operation. If both devices are USB 2.0 you can easily
overrun the USB Root Hub.

This won't make any technological sense, but turning the PC Off for 20
to 30 minutes with the power plug removed will sometimes reset things.

You have to be very careful when this situation appears. Sometimes the
more things you try the more tangled up things become.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Friday, June 05, 2009 7:10:47 AM, and on a whim,
R. McCarty pounded out on the keyboard:

Was the 2nd external also a USB ? - USB to USB copy is a very slow
and error prone operation. If both devices are USB 2.0 you can easily
overrun the USB Root Hub.

This won't make any technological sense, but turning the PC Off for 20
to 30 minutes with the power plug removed will sometimes reset things.

You have to be very careful when this situation appears. Sometimes the
more things you try the more tangled up things become.

Yes, both were USB drives. I'll try turning it off for a while and see.

I also launched EASEUS Partition Manager and saw that the drives are
listed as Hidden, and when unhidden (before applying) the drive letter
came back. But Unhiding them required a reboot and nothing was changed
after.


Terry R.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Friday, June 05, 2009 7:10:47 AM, and on a whim,
R. McCarty pounded out on the keyboard:

Was the 2nd external also a USB ? - USB to USB copy is a very slow
and error prone operation. If both devices are USB 2.0 you can easily
overrun the USB Root Hub.

This won't make any technological sense, but turning the PC Off for 20
to 30 minutes with the power plug removed will sometimes reset things.

You have to be very careful when this situation appears. Sometimes the
more things you try the more tangled up things become.

I just got back in and booted the workstation. No change on the
behavior. Plugging it in if I double click on the icon in the Tray, I
can see the drive and it's listed as a "generic volume", but no drive
letter and nothing in Explorer.

What next?


Terry R.

 

[Terry R.]

The date and time was Friday, June 05, 2009 6:40:02 AM, and on a whim,
Terry R. pounded out on the keyboard:

I have a 500 gig external USB drive that filled up. I connected an
external 1.5 Tb drive yesterday to copy the contents, and left the copy
procedure to work overnight.

This morning the computer had blue screened. Now when I plug the drives
in, they're identified when I double click on "Safely Remove Hardware",
but no drives are assigned in Explorer. In Disk Management the drive is
listed and the partitions healthy, but right clicking only offers
"Delete Partition".

I've Googled, "external hard drive not assigned a drive letter" and "usb
drive does not show in explorer". One suggestion to use,
"DeleteLowerAndUpperFiltersForUSBOrExternalHardDiskDrive.msi" was a
disaster, as I create backups of the 3 hard drives partitions and on a
reboot, every partition was assigned a drive letter, even though most of
them are hidden, and there wasn't a way to remove the drive letter from
them.

I tried a ERDNT registry restore from yesterday and nothing changed.
Anything else I can do?

Terry R.

I figured out a way to get the drives working again. Nothing in any
Google search helped. If anyone has this problem and wants to know how
to resolve it, contact me.


Terry R.