When I plug in my external hard drive (again, NOT USB stick), and right click on the icon in This PC, there is no option to eject the drive.
https://i.postimg.cc/J7xg0mK4/Fullscreen-capture-26-10-2023-002517-bmp.jpg
There is a system tray option to "safely eject" external drives but not only the F:\ is grayed out but also doesn't name the HDD like it use to (WD passport 25E1)
https://i.postimg.cc/rpgWWhHW/Fullscreen-capture-26-10-2023-002251-bmp.jpg
Steps I have taken to resolve the issue:
- Restarting Explorer
- Restarting PC (when it comes back up, the situation remains the same)
- Removing the drive from device manager and attaching it in different port (situation remains the same)
- Running the command:
RunDll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll
Gives me this: https://i.postimg.cc/MHM7b7kD/image-2023-10-26-004839.png
"The device is not removable and cannot be ejected"
This is I have in the device manager: https://i.postimg.cc/3NV1X1t8/Capture.png
The device drivers seem to be intact: https://i.postimg.cc/prhYL8Rg/2.png
Please also note that I can transfer the files from and to the device without any issues. Please also note the same external HDD doesn't have this issue on another computer I tried it on.
There's important data on the drive and I'm scared that if I keep pulling the plug without safely removing the device, I may end up in a situation where Windows start showing notification that "drive is corrupt and needs fixing" and wouldn't let me use it. I can't afford to lose the data on this HDD.
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Please don't mark the question duplicate because most of the similar issues are about USB drives and not external HDD drive and rest doesn't answer my question.
