Windows 7 - My external drive is missing when I try to remove or eject

Hi odd thing happening. I can attach my external hard drive without any problems and it works fine. When I try to safely remove using the small USB icon in the systems tray, there is nothing there - nothing at all....

Any ideas - perhaps I am missing a driver? Thanks

Hi, I may be wrong but 'quick removal' may be enabled.

Try disabling it.

By opening device manager. (Start, search run and run this "devmgmt.msc") make sure you run as admin if it asks.

Find your drive in the menu. (Mine is a usb memory stick but it may apply to your drive.)

Click 'disk drives' > find your drive in the submenu (mine was a sandisk memory stick) > double click the drive > select the 'policies tab' > check better performance > click 'apply'

Reboot. See if that worked. If not sorry it's all i can suggest.

thanks for your help. Unfortunately that didn't help. Very odd situation this....if I figure it out I will post back but anyone reading this have any idea? Thanks!

Is the Windows-assigned drive letter for the external drive still showing in Windows Explorer?

Or has the drive just "disappeared", meaning it might have powered-off or otherwise be electrically gone? Are its lights still on? Any indication it's alive and active? Can you hear it?

Try shutting down your PC, then pull the USB cable from drive to the PC, and then pull the power cord for the drive to the wall. Now power things back up. Plug in the external drive to wall power, then power on the PC and get the Windows desktop stabilized, and then plug the USB cable in from external drive to PC. You should get the "new hardware detected" sound when the external drive is seen and gets a drive letter and can be seen in Explorer.

Now you should have that USB icon in system tray, and the right-click on it should show "safely remove" with that device listed. Does it?


If not, then there's something obviously wrong if you've previously used that external drive without these problems.

Devices connected in MTP (or PTP mode, for cameras and printers, etc.) mode do not get Windows drive letters but can be accessed through Windows Explorer and some other 3rd-party apps, and do not appear in the USB "safely remove" icon list.

But devices connected in MSC mode DO get Windows drive letters and can be accessed by 100% of Windows and 3rd-party apps, and DO appear in the USB "safely remove" icon list. Presumably your external drive is in this category, and obviously should have appeared in the "safely remove" list unless its electrical power has disappeared (USB connector on your PC??) or there's a hardware failure in it or the enclosure.