External hard drives not recognized after Nov upgrade

[elfordo]

I recently was subject to an extensive windows update and since that time my external hard drives do not appear in file explorer.

When I interrogate the disc management/storage, the discs appear in the lower sections as disc one and two 149g and 465g however, they do not appear in the upper section.

I am now at a loss how to rectify this issue as all the forums I have read say change the drive number which I can't as they do not appear in the upper section.
I have also ran device manager but all usb hubs seem to be working fine with no unrecognized devices.

Would really appreciate your help
Thanks in advance

 

[elfordo]

Have included a snapshot of my screen, hope this helps to clarify my problem?

 

[Saltgrass]

You seem to have some unusual configurations. But first, does turning off the external drives allow them to be recognized?

The Recovery partition on your OS drive shows as OEM... maybe not a good thing, especially if you have been using EaseUS.

You have EFI system partitions on both of the other drives, are they working installs?

 

[elfordo]

Thanks for replying

You seem to have some unusual configurations. But first, does turning off the external drives allow them to be recognized? Unfortunately not

The Recovery partition on your OS drive shows as OEM... maybe not a good thing, especially if you have been using EaseUS. As far as I know I havent been using easeUS unless its sneaked in somewhere

You have EFI system partitions on both of the other drives, are they working installs?

. They were until the upgrade. I reformatted the 149gig drive to fat 32 for it to be to be read by a satellite receiver

 

[Saltgrass]

I have seen a system where having an additional Fat32 partition on a UEFI system could confuse the system. Normally I run a parallel boot with EFI partition for booting on two different drives and this works fine, but having one separate which is not bootable may present a problem. I suppose removing that drive would make a difference if it was a problem.

If you have copied or cloned the partitions on the three drives, there may be a situation where the partition identifiers are the same which would also confuse the system.

It is interesting Disk Management does see the drives and does not show them as offline. You could try assign a drive letter to one of the other NTFS partitions to see if you could read the partition.

If you have DirecTV, I replace those drives, if allowed, by just replacing the drive. The system will set it up.

 

[Norton]

This is a long shot.
Type "Folders in the Win Search box, select "Show Hidden Files and Folders" > "View Tab" make sure that "Hide Empty Drives" is unchecked and "Show drive letters is Checked"

 

[Norton]

This may sound silly. But, I deleted some apps today and then decided to perform a system image.
My USB HD wasn't recognized, thumb drives were. Turns out I plugged in the wrong (phone charger) USB connector. My heart missed a few beats for a couple of minutes. All OK now Phew!