I have an SSD + enclosure that I am using as an external drive. When I try to plug it in directly into my Surface Pro, I get E:\ is not accessible. Incorrect function.
. However, when I plug a usb hub into the same port, and then plug the external drive into the hub, my computer recognizes it fine. Some more things I've tried:
- uninstalled the device driver and restarted PC
- uninstalled the usb port driver and restarted PC
- rescan disks from disk management
- run
chkdsk E: /f /r /x
, gives meCannot open volume for direct access
- changing the drive letter to
P:
(drive letter changed, still not accessible)
More details:
- accessible when plugged into my macbook pro
- accessible when plugged into my desktop PC
- the enclosure uses USB-C, my surface pro uses USB A
- I've used the SSD a couple times already in a different enclosure, and the SSD is already partitioned into an exFAT partition and a NTFS partition
- shows up fine in Device Manager as a disk drive, and correctly identifies the chipset
- in Disk Management, doesn't show up under "Volume" but still shows up as a disk (image below)
- doesn't show up in Diskpart command-line utility
- it shows up in file explorer as a generic "USB Drive" (note that it should actually show up as 2 drives since there are two partitions)
- this problem started while I was testing out 3 different enclosures. First one worked OK (but slow). Second one got really hot and caused the computer to freeze up, and on subsequent attempts to connect the drive, would go into a disconnect/reconnect loop. The third one is the one I'm currently trying to use, with issues described above. However I feel like the issue is not the third enclosure, since it's brand new and works fine on other computers
Update:
So some more mysterious behavior. Using my desktop PC, I deleted all partitions from the drive, and for extra measure, created a single new partition, formatted it, and then deleted it again. Then I plugged the drive back into my Surface, and I still got the same error, P:\ is not accessible. Incorrect function.
! What's extra surprising is that it's still using the drive letter that I assigned to it before formatting it. I was expecting it to be treated as a new drive, but somehow my Surface Pro still "remembers" it. I have no idea how my Surface is identifying the drive and how it still is able to map that drive letter to the formatted drive.
Could it be that it's recognizing the enclosure itself as a disk??