My Computer Doesn't "See" External Hard Drives

Toshiba laptop, W10 Home, Ver 1803

I have 2 external hard drives. When I plug either of them into a USB port I hear the normal beep sound, indicating they've been recognized but they don't automatically play, even though auto play is enabled . They don't even show up in "this PC", as if they don't exist. Funny thing is, when plugged into my HP machine, running same OS, they show up OK. Both laptops are fairly new, so I don't know why the HP acts differently than the Toshiba. BTW, I'm pretty sure at one time the Toshiba was able to read the external drives OK. Maybe an update messed something up?

Restart the computer with the USB attached and see if it shows up.

Porthos said:

Restart the computer with the USB attached and see if it shows up.

Thanks, Porthos. I tried it and no go. When I open up ., device management/"other devices, the external drive shows up as "Elements 25A2", so the computer is recognizing it, but that's as far a it goes. I'm tempted to reset this computer, but that's a little radical.

Go to diskmanger if they are there you need to assign a drive letter to them

Samuria said:

Go to diskmanger if they are there you need to assign a drive letter to them

Thanks, Porthos. That worked. I assigned the external drive the letter F, which I recall, was the original letter when the device was working.