Device unavailable; appears in Disk Management yet not in File Explorer
Device unavailable; appears in Disk Management yet not in File Explorer
I'm facing a challenge without another machine to test. Though I'm not dismissing hardware issues entirely, it seems unlikely two drives and several USB sticks would face the same trouble. My suspicion leans toward a Windows-related problem. The Device Manager lists four unrecognized devices—two marked as inaccessible hard drives—each showing "Location: on Volume Manager." Drivers aren't installed, and no compatible ones exist. Clicking Update Driver returns an error: "Windows could not find drivers for your device." When I insert a flash drive, another unknown device appears, also unreachable. All these issues started two days ago.
You can always obtain a bootable Linux USB and start your machine on Linux to check if the drives are functioning or not. The Ubuntu Live installer should accomplish this. If needed, use Gparted to retrieve details about the partitions of the affected drives when they aren't listed in Files.