Large FAT32 external harddrives and Windows 10 issue

Hello all,
I did a full and fresh reinstall (via “Reset this PC”) of Windows 10 on my Lenovo Thinkpad i7 computer.

Now all my large (4TB+) external hard drives are not getting a drive letter. They were all fine prior to the reinstall, in other words, I have used these on this computer prior to reinstall.

I am able to open smaller external drives without issue.

One is via Thunderbolt USB-C, the other is USB 3.0.

They both worked fine on this computer before the full reinstall.

Within the Disk Manager, I am able to see the Disk (Disk 1), but it is not given a drive letter, nor can access the files. I also cannot add a letter. See photos below.

I cannot reformat these as everything on them is needed ASAP.

Any help with this would be most appreciated.



- - - Updated - - -
@jumanji I think you are the best expert for my issue. Thank you

1. EFI Partition for what?
2. FS=FAT32 for a storage disk! (probably RAW now)
3. 128 MB unallocated
3. Recovery Partition 505 MB only

I would clean the whole disk and format it NTFS
If there are any data on the disk, you can try testdisk 7.1 to recover

Well, it appears from the screen captures you post the 4.7GB partition does not have a recognizable Windows filesystem.
The FILESYSTEM column is BLANK. Not NTFS, not EXFAT, not FAT32.
So if Windows does not see a valid filesystem type, there will be no drive letter assigned, nor any files visible.

If you put that drive on another computer does it mount and recognize the filesystem in that partition?
Or has the disk somehow been corrupted and the filesystem info been overwritten?
If the latter you might want to find a third party data recovery program.

Do you have backups of this disk? I hope so.

You should see FILESYSTEMS for all those data partitions, like this.
Probably of type NTFS would be most common, altho possibly FAT32 or EXFAT if they were formatted as such.
EFI and RECOVERY partitions will not list a filesystem type in Disk Manager, but they are technically FAT32(EFI) and NTFS(Recovery).

I am sorry, I am confused.
This drive, plus all my other large drives (5 so far tested), worked yesterday before I reset my computer. So, in otherwords it has to be my computer, not the drives (otherwise how could all of them do the same thing).

It is just my big drives that cannot read on this computer, I believe they are all FAT32.

No, I do not have a backup, as these are my backups. Again, they were all working fine yesterday. They were not plugged in when I reset the PC. So they cannot be the issue, the computer has to be the issue.

Factory Reset will remove all 3rd-party drivers. Did you have to install any storage drivers to get the external drives working?

I do not remember if I had to install a 3rd-party driver, but I doubt that I had to install many, as all my large drives are different.

Again, I have used these external drives on the same computer prior to the windows re-install. So I am confused why all my large external drives are not working on my new install. And, the items on this drive are irreplaceable, so converting in not an option.