All of a sudden, the Windows 10 OS on my laptop was not showing the connected flash drives in the My Computer interface. The OS detected the drives as it showed the option to eject device safely on the taskbar.
Even after formatting the disk, Windows failed to display the connected drives in the Win Explorer and My Computer. Because of this problem, I was not able to copy important files from the flash drive to the notebook.
Changing the drive letter fixed the issue for me. If you are facing the same problem, follow the below two methods to resolve it.
Method 1:
The Windows OS ships with a Disk Management tool, with which you can change drive letters or format disks. To do so, right-click on the start menu. Now, select the disk management option. A window with options to manage drives will now appear on the screen.
Identify your drive from the list. Right-click on it. Now, choose Change Drive Letter and Paths option. A small window will now be shown on the screen. Click the change button on that window to assign a drive letter.
You should use this tool with precaution else you may lose important files and folders. Data Recovery will be difficult if you format a partition accidentally. If you do not want to take any risks, try out the free Nirsoft DriveLetterView program.
Method 2:
Nirsoft has introduced a plethora of small utility programs for Windows. The DLV is one among them.
DriveLetterView is a lightweight Windows app (download link). It is portable and takes less than one megabytes storage memory. It is a free tool.
The program shows the below details of a drive when you run it.
- Letter, type, name.
- Description, instance ID, status (connected, disconnected).
- Device path, device ID, BUS type, last update time.
- File system, volume name, serial number.
- Free space, cluster size, vendor information.
Nirsoft DLV shows the drive letters even if you have not connected the device to your PC.
If the OS is not showing the external flash drive or HDD in the Explorer or My Computer interface, you can fix this issue with this tool. To do so, click on the options menu and select the change drive letter option.
The DLV program requires administrator permission for changing the letters of the disk. If you do not run it as an admin user, you will see an access denied error message when you try to change drive letters.
The program lets you test the disk read/write speed. You can save the detail of the items shown in the list to a text, HTML, XML, and a CSV file. Nirsoft DriveLetterView allows you to create an HTML report of the identified devices as well.
The inbuilt Windows Disk Management Tool and Nirsoft DriveLetterView support Windows XP, 10, 8.1,8, 7, and Vista operating systems. If the My Computer or Windows Explorer is not showing your Pendrive or external HDD, follow the tips I have shared in this article to fix the issue.
