USB Hard Drive Doesn’t Auto recognize to a Good Drive Letter

[Jesse69]

My Win 7 Pro autoupdates and I'm sure it has SP1.

[st33lcas3]

Originally Posted by Jesse69

My Win 7 Pro autoupdates and I'm sure it has SP1.

Understood. I'm just trying to eliminate some possible factors.

[TurcoLoco]

Originally Posted by Jesse69

I think I tried your stuff. Disk Management only assigns the My Passport an A: or B: drive which I don't like.

Regardless of what is assigned to it, are you not able to change the drive letter? What happens when you do try it, error message? no other drive letters available?

I would recommend downloading the freebie called USB DeviceView from Nirsoft and taking a look at "Mass Storage" listed under "Device Type". Anything that is not plugged in yet shows up, can and should be removed (uninstalled).

Also, open the registry editor and browse to this location to see if there is a value named "NoDrives" listed on the right hand side and if it there is, delete it:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Curre ntVersion\Policies

Additionally, I suspect a possible issue with the drive if none of the above helps. See if you can run a Scandisk on this external drive and if it comes out OK or not?

Also, does the capacity/free space info of the drive under Windows Explorer appears accurately?

PS. I never had to do what Mensaguy mentioned but just as long as you disconnect all your USB storage device beforehand to minimize issues, I don't see any problem trying this as a possible fix.

[mensaguy]

Originally Posted by Jesse69

At first plugin the My Passport wouldn't recognize and I had to use Disk Management to assign it a Drive Letter B: It won't recognize as drives D: to Z: which would be better.

First, solve the obvious problem. Then, figure out why it isn't getting a drive letter automatically.