I'm in a bit of a pickle, and I can't go and manually fix the issue because of covid restrictions.
I have some older data collection equipment that I had left offloading data via a USB port to a computer in the office that I can VPN in from home to check its progress. It is several TBs of acoustic data, and there isn't enough room on the computer's local drive so we frequently offload the data directly to the shared network drive, where it will live long-term anyway. Due to this, on average it takes 2-3 days to offload. It takes about the same amount of time if we offload to an external disk and then copy it to the networked drive.
Anyway, the IT department scheduled a restart for this computer and didn't inform me, which interrupted the data offload. Annoying, sure, but the bigger issue is that I can no longer access the older data collection equipment. The data is only accessible through an equipment specific software. To access the data you must first open the software, plug in the equipment to the computer via USB, and then start the offload. Since the equipment was already plugged into the computer when IT restarted it, I can't see the equipment when I open the software.
Because of covid restrictions, I can't go into the office and just unplug the equipment manually like I normally would. Is there a way to trick the computer into thinking the USBs were unplugged, and then plugged in again? I know I can eject the USB ports while accessing the computer via VPN, but can I trick the computer into seeing them again after I do that?
Screenshot of my Device Manager, and how the USB drives look:
