F:/ not accessible

jpizar83 · Sep 3, 2015

I have a HP, Windows 8 operating system. Earlier today I plugged in my USB drive and tried to access something in a specific folder, but everything in that folder was gone, however a few minutes later I was able to open a document in a different folder. Maybe an hour later I plugged my USB back in but could not open the drive on my computer. The name I had given it had been erased; it was only referred to as Removable Disk (F: ).

When I tried to open it, a window opened saying, "You need to format the disk in drive F: before you can use it. Do you want to format it now?" I said cancel and another window popped up saying, "F:/ is not accessible. The volume does not contain a recognizable file system. Please make sure that all required file system drivers are loaded and the volume is not corrupted."

Have I lost everything or is there a way to fix this and get everything back? Please help!

DavidGP · Sep 4, 2015

Hi

Its possible that the USB drive letter or recognition is amiss with Windows, this can happen when the portable device is plugged into other devices. So best 1st test is to delete the USB driver reference for this device on your PC and recreate.

To do this, open device manager and then the Universal Serial Bus Controller branch and then note the list, then plug in your device and not the change, it may say Mass Storage Device and right click and uninstall this device, then unplug and replug in your USB Device and the drive should reload the driver again and be accessible

The fix could be to assign a drive letter to the device thats XYZ range, so to do this open Disk Management and with the USB device connected right click and assign a new drive letter and choose in the XYZ range of the alphabet a letter.

If after this it does not help then you could use a data recovery application like Disk Drill and Recuva both free

BUT try the drive association letter first, also if the data recovery apps find data, have the save path as your HDD and to the USB pen as its likely data to be recovered will be written over.

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F:/ not accessible

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DavidGP MajorGeeks Forum Administrator - Grand Pooh-Bah Staff Member