I changed the drive letter and now need help.

[Halfbaked]

Last night I hooked up one of my back up drives via USB. The pc recognized it but it showed a drive letter other than the one I wanted.
Not thinking it through I changed the drive letter. It took awhile to do since I had never done it before.
Now when I plug the drive in, the PnP sees it and I get the tray icon so that I can safely disconnect.
Device manager sees it too.
However, when I hover the mouse icon over 'Computer' in the Start menu, the drive does not show up.
Nor is it visible if I right click on 'Computer' and then click on 'Open'. And Shadow Protect Desktop doesn't see it either, making it impossible for me to make an image for back up.
Since I can't see it when I click 'Open' I can't try to change it back again.
Please tell me how to fix this.
Thanks.
H

 

[derekimo]

You might want to see if this tutorial helps you out,
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/82994-drive-letter-add-change-remove-windows-7-a.html?filter

 

[DarkStar GT]

What happens if you do "Safely Remove" it, unplug it, then plug it back in?

What does it look like in "Disk Management". Can you post a screenshot?

 

[Halfbaked]

I've been trying to upload some screenshots but I keep getting a notice that it failed because of a token problem.?
I've managed to change the letter name back to F.
But I still can't use the F drive because, even though the 'Safely remove hardware' icon shows up in the tray, the computer does not list the drive unless I go into Manage disks.
Thanks.
H

 

[severedsolo]

silly question... have you tried just plugging it into a different USB slot?

 

[Tepid]

Try this app,, it may help....

USBDeview

Find the USB Device that the drive is using, and right click uninstall it.
This is a great app to work out issues such as this.

But, don't go hog wild with it.

When you uninstall it (while the drive is unplugged from the system) when you plug the drive back in, it will redetect and reinstall the USB Adapter for the drive.

You also need to make sure that the drive letter you are using is not already in use.
This happens when you have a bunch of USB drives. They can overlap sometimes and cause this issue.

USBDeview can resolve it. Unless there is an actual hardware issue somewhere.

For the record,, changing the Drive Letter itself would not cause this issue unless you were able to assign a drive letter that was already in use, or something else took that drive letter.

 

[Halfbaked]

severedsolo,
Not silly. Made no difference. But thanks.

Tepid,
Thanks for the link. It's a keeper.
But my problem remains.
I also again tried changing connections around. And tried mounting the drive in a different enclosure and tried another backup drive.
The only thing that makes a difference is that the 2nd drive is properly seen by the OS.
The drive I'm having trouble with will not be seen by the OS no matter what I try.
Thanks.
H

EDIT:
I was just trying to check the files on the drive that has been giving me a problem and it gave out with a tiny spark and died.
Apparently there was an existing problem with it that didn't show up.
Thanks to everybody for trying to help me.
H