Member Avatar for Michael_SB

I swapped out my HDD for an SSD in my Win 8.1 Lenovo Y480, replacing the HDD in the optical drive slot using an . The system runs fine. I still see the original copy of the Windows System disk that sits on the HDD in Windows listed as drive I:, in addition to the cloned C: drive which is booting from the SSD. I haven't deleted the old copy of the System Drive from the HDD yet, in case of errors &c. as I'm still trying the system.
However, when I plug in external USB HDDs now, none of them register with Windows. They are visible to Device Manager and Disk Manager, but they are not being assigned drive letters. They work fine on my mac, but not on this PC.
I get the message at startup saying "Check cable connections" or something. I will reboot and copy that text into another post below.
I'm also going to check the BIOS options, in case I changed some of those options when doing the change over. I can't see the option to save this post until I come back, so I'll just have to append the results in the next post down.
But has anyone encounted this problem, and do you have any suggestions? Thanks!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rproffitt

Dani AI

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Brief summary and likely causes (based on the Y480 + optical-bay caddy setup described by and the Disk Management advice from ): the behavior points to one of three things — (A) Windows mount/drive-letter conflicts or disk-signature collisions after cloning, (B) intermittent USB enumeration/power problems (cable, port or power negotiation), or (C) driver/ghost-device state preventing automatic letter assignment. The fact that a manual letter sometimes works then later fails suggests enumeration or stale mount points rather than a hardware-only failure.

Practical, ordered checks to run now

  • Hardware first: try the same external drive on a different Windows PC, swap USB cable, use a different USB port (USB2 vs USB3), and try a powered USB hub. Removing the optical-bay caddy temporarily (to rule out interaction) is a quick test.
  • Disk Management: open Computer > Manage > Disk Management and note the disk status: Online / Offline / Not initialized / Unallocated. If a volume exists with no letter use “Change Drive Letter and Paths…” to add one. If Disk Management shows a disk Offline because of a signature collision, right‑click the disk and choose Online. Do not Initialize a disk if it contains user data — that will alter partitioning.
  • If Disk Management is stubborn, use diskpart (run CMD as Administrator):
diskpart
list volume
select volume N    <-- pick the external volume number
assign letter=G

If the whole disk is Offline:

list disk
select disk N
online disk

Device Manager, drivers and power settings

  • In Device Manager choose View → Show hidden devices and uninstall ghost/old USB mass storage entries, then reboot.
  • Under Universal Serial Bus controllers open each USB Root Hub → Power Management and uncheck “Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power.” In Power Options disable “USB selective suspend.”
  • Update the laptop’s chipset/USB drivers from Lenovo support for the Y480. Check Event Viewer → System around the time you plug devices in for “device not migrated” or driver errors — those Event IDs help pinpoint driver vs hardware faults.

If those fail

  • Back up the registry, then consider cleaning stale mount points at HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices (only if comfortable; this is a common fix for persistent letter conflicts). Use a third‑party drive‑letter manager as a last resort (as mentioned). If the problem persists, capture the device VID/PID shown in Device Manager and any Event Viewer error text and post them — they help diagnose driver enumeration vs power/hardware causes.

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Member Avatar for rproffitt

I may be duplicating this issue soon on my Win 8.1 Lenovo y510p Yesterday I ordered one of those caddies to place SSD or HDD into the ODD space. Until then there were incidents where drive letters assigned conflicted with a newly added internal drive in desktops. Mind you this may move around with which Windows but until I get my caddy and see if same happens, look around for this:

Right click on Computer icon on Desktop > Manage > Double click on Disk management > See if there any unassigned drive exist or not. If exist then manually "Change Drive Letter & Path"

Edited by rproffitt
Member Avatar for Michael_SB

Yes, assigning a drive letter worked temporarily in Drive Manager, but the next time I plugged in, it didn't work. Also, I tried to use a colleague's drive, and it didn't even register with Drive Manager, although it worked in my office's Mac - a FAT 32 drive.

Anyone have any insight into external drives not registering with Windows?

Member Avatar for rproffitt

Update. My caddy for my y510p just arrived so later I'll plug that in with some HDD. Next I'll try some USB sticks to see what happens.

There are many prior discussions about USB enumeration and in rare instances having to clean out a certain registry tree to clear the road for Windows to pick a new drive letter.

It's an old issue where say Drive F: was used for the USB stick but the new HDDs use F: and the letter assignment fails on the USB stick later. A trip to disk management usually is the next stop.

However I have a question. Is that asking too much from users today?

Member Avatar for rproffitt

Another update. It took a while to remember how I found a drive letter manager (or even that name!) So here's the path I took.

http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/112479-windows-7-does-not-assign-drive-letters-external-hdds.html then over to http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbdlm_e.html

It's been updated for Windows 8 and 10 so they've been busy. Sorry, still off doing other things but the drive caddy is on my list of things to do.

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