Windows does not recognize when a physical hard drive has been swapped

Question

I have an external USB -> SATA3 dock that is connected to a USB 3 connection on my Windows 10 Pro 64 1803 machine. It reads and writes everything just fine to the drive. But when I shut down the machine and swap the drive for a different drive (I use this for backing up several other drives), Windows thinks that the previous drive is still inserted, even to the point of showing the directory structure from the previous drive and of course it also reports it as being corrupted. The only cure I've found so far is to go into Disk Management, delete the partition, reformat it, reboot the machine again, and recopy ALL of the data (instead of just doing a quick sync)! This is really annoying.

How can I force Windows 10 to forget the old drive once it has been removed and read the newly inserted drive as a brand new drive? I'm pretty sure it has to do with the USB identifier not changing and Windows associating the identifier with a drive type. But that does not work for my case.

Is there anything I can do besides what I mentioned above?

Answer 1

I'm not sure you read my question. Because what you are suggesting is exactly what I'm doing and trying to avoid because it destroys the existing data on the newly inserted drive, every time.

Answer 2

Hi Bryan!

Welcome to our community.

 I am glad to assist you today.

Sorry to hear about this inconvenience.

Please follow these steps below and let me know if it works:

1. go to start > control panel (switch to Classic View) > administrative tools

> computer management > storage : disk management

your second disk will show, but not active(initialized)

need to make active by right clicking on window that represents then drive
then make active partition(drive)
select to create partition (if applicable)
select format (if applicable)

wait and drive will change status to "healthy" at top windows and your drive/data will now be accessible and visible in 'My Computer'

2. 1). Go to Computer Management at Control Panel -> Administrative Tools

2). Click on Disk Management and you will get a shown of partition hardisk on your computer

3). Right Click on Hardisk that doesn't show a partition and choose "Import Foreign Disks"

4). Check the Checklist and Click Ok