Facing some problem accessing external hard drives on your Windows computer? All the external hard drives or storage device supports the ‘Plug&Play’ system on Windows devices. So, you can just connect the device to your Windows system and get access to the stored materials. But, if the users are having some problem accessing external hard drive, you can take the following measures to fix the issue.
Fix 1 – Toggle the ownership of the drive
Every Windows user doesn’t have access to all the drives on the computer. You have to permit the user access to the drive.
NOTE – We have changed the ownership to ‘Everyone’ to include all the users. You can change it to your own user account if you prefer.
Step 1 – Now, load up the File Explorer.
Step 2 – Then, find the drive from the “This PC” page.
Step 3 – Next, right-click the drive from there and choose to open up the “Properties” option.
Step 4 – Tap to open up the “Security” tab.
Step 5 – Open up the “Advanced” settings.
Step 6 – Now, tap the “Change” button beside the ‘Owner:’ tab.
Step 7 – Write “Everyone” there and click “OK“.
Step 8 – Next, check the “Replace owner on subcontainers and objects” box.
Step 9 – Do the same with the “Replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object” option.
Step 10 – After this, quickly tap “Apply” and “OK” to save the changes.
Step 11 – Again, open up the “Advanced” security settings page of the drive.
Now, you will notice the change in the ownership of the drive.
Step 12 – Now, tap “Change permissions” option once.
Step 13 – Next, tap “Add“.
Step 14 – Choose to tap the “Select a principle” option.
Step 15 – Write “Everyone” again and tap “OK“.
Step 16 – Finally, check the “Full Control” option and tap “OK” to save the change.
Later, save the changes to the Advanced Security settings utility page.
You may have to reboot your machine once. Later, you can access the drive without any issues.
Fix 2 – Run the error checker
There is an error checking tool that can be effective in this case.
Step 1 – Start by opening up the Win+E keys together.
Step 2 – Next, open up the “This PC” panel.
Step 3 – Find the problematic drive there. Right-click the same drive and click “Properties“.
Step 4 – Then, go to the “Tools” tab.
Step 5 – Later, you have to use the ‘Error Checking’ option. Tap the “Check” option there.
Step 6 – Tap “Scan drive” option to run the force scan on the drive.
This tool will fix any issues with the drive and make it usable again.
Fix 3 – Use some basic troubleshooting steps
While you are trying to implement these software dependent solutions, this can be result from a hardware issue as well.
Step 1 – Check the USB port that you are using. Use a different USB port to connect the external drive.
Step 2 – If you are using any hub to connect the drive, check the viability of the hub as well.
See if you can access the external hard drive or not.
Fix 4 – Reset your user permission
You must reset all the user access permission using the command line.
Step 1 – To do this, simply search for “cmd” from the search box.
Step 2 – Next, right-tap the “Command Prompt” from the search results and tap “Run as administrator“.
Step 3 – Paste this line in the CMD page and hit Enter to modify the access control lists across the OS.
ICACLS * /reset /t /c /q
Once you have run this command, it will refresh the user access permission for all the existing drives.
Check the hard drive once again.
Fix 5 – Change your account level
You may not have access to all the drives if your account is a standard account. So, activate the administrator account to counter this problem.
Step 1 – Open up a CMD window on your computer.
Step 2 – Type this code there and hit Enter to activate the administrator account.
net user administrator /active:yes
After activating the account, try to access the drive once again. Check if this works.