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External SSD not detected in Windows 11 every now and again?
I have a quite a few 2.5 inch SSD drives, when needed I connect them via a usb-sata cable. Every now and again Windows 11 does not recognise the drives. It shows up in "This Pc" but no drive letter, it also shows in device manager. When I click on it nothing happens.
If I connect it to a VM with Ubuntu, I can see all the files, so what I end up doing is copying them from there to a new drive. Then format the original and that becomes useable again, this is very time consuming and frustrating.
I always make sure that the device is not being written to or accessed when I disconnect it.
Can anyone please let me know what the root cause might be?
I would also appreciate if anyone has an easier fix? rather than loading it into Linux every time?
1 Reply
It sounds like you're dealing with intermittent recognition issues and drive letter assignment problems with your USB-connected SSDs on Windows 11. This can be caused by several factors, including driver issues, drive letter conflicts, power management settings, or filesystem inconsistencies.
