When we plug in our external drive (e.g. thumbdrive, external hard drive, SD Card etc) in to the PC/laptop, there is seen to be some activities that Windows is accessing the drive. But this is nothing happening on the screen. When we open the Windows Explorer, we can’t find the external drive or media.

We are wondering, what actually happened. Is the external drive damaged or worse, the USB port is damaged.

There is a possibility that the Windows could not automatically assign the drive letter to the removable media. The followings are the steps to manually assign the drive letter to the external media.

1. Insert the external drive. Wait for a while for the Windows to detect it.

2. Go to “Control panel” and go to the “Administrative Tools”. If the control panel is set to classic view, just need to double click on the icon. If the control panel is set to “Category View”, then we need to select “Performance and Maintenance” and then go to the “Administrative Tools”.

3. In the “Administrative Tools” view, double click on the “Computer Management”.

Administrative Tools Window

4. In the “Computer Management”, on the left folder view, select “Storage” and then “Disk Management”.

Computer Management Window

5. Locate your Memory Card. Right click on it and select “Change Drive Letter and Paths…”

Select the "Change Drive Letter and Paths..."

6. Follow the instruction to assign it to another Drive letter. Make sure that this drive letter is not used by any other media, e.g. Hard drive or CD.

Changing the Drive Letter

If the process is successful, Windows would automatically prompt on external drive action.

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