external hard drives not recognised

Toby43 said:

Just 2 quickies. Do you mean a clone or an image? I think I understand the difference immediately afterwatching YouTube 'how tos' on it, but a month later I'm back to head scratching. And should an anti virus be added - or anything else before using Macrium or should it be done as soon as the OS is on, even before tweaking the appearnace of the desktop?
The last time I did this I started by deleting and merging all the partitions on the ssd before unleashing the media creation tool created Windows OS on it. Is that necessary or does the OS do it itself?

Run a backup image and not a clone. You can do that whenever you want. If you use Macrium then you can run a differential or incremental whenever you make changes or additions. That way you can always roll back anything you do that proves to be problematic.
Whenever you do a clean install using the media creation tool you want to delete all the partitions on whatever drive you’re going to install Windows on. That way windows creates all the necessary partition that the OS needs. Of course you need to backup/save all your important data first.

Just for future reference Nirsoft's USBDeview is a handy utility. View any installed/connected USB device on your system (nirsoft.net), 64-bit download at bottom of page.

I've uninstalled the driver for an unconnected USB external drive and then reconnected it forcing Windows to identify it again. Might have helped.