Need help to fix an inaccessible USB drive?

Djard · Saturday at 4:42 PM

I downloaded Macrium Reflect v8 from trusted MajorGeeks and attempted to clone my SSD onto an external USB drive. Now the external USB drive is inaccessible. Grrrrr! Although I assigned the letter M when cloning, Macrium assigned the letter C to volume 0 that I suspect created the problem. Win ChkDsk reports the drive to be healthy. I tried the following without success:

~ Create a simple volume in Windows Disk Mgt (the option is grayed in all four partitions)
~ Macrium's Rescue Media (fails)
~ Paragon Partition Manager (fails)
~ Windows' DiskPart -> list disk -> select disk 1 -> list partition -> select partition 1 -> list volume -> select volume 0 -> assign letter=G. At this point, a notice appears:

"Virtual Disk Service error:
Assigning or removing drive letter on the current boot or pagefile volume is not allowed."

File Explorer does recognize the drive as (G:) and (M:), but neither are accessible (see attached pic).

I searched for software to change the drive letter or to fix an inaccessible drive. All I could find are data recovery tools. But I don't need to recover any data on the inaccessible drive. Is anything else I can try?

glasskuter · Saturday at 6:36 PM

You can no longer mount an image created with Macrium Free in Windows 11. I believe this very lengthy thread should explain why. Overwhelmed - Macrium Reflect

Djard · 2026-06-28T05:03:10-0400

I plan on avoiding Macrium like a plague. My need is to fix the the USB drive it made inaccessible. There must be a way to assign a drive letter to the volume in the partition that File Explorer will recognize.

kelper · 2026-06-28T05:24:00-0400

Right-click on this box and post a screenshot

antspants · 2026-06-28T05:32:23-0400

My apologies, for some reason I was thinking USB drive

kelper · 2026-06-28T05:35:14-0400

As you don't need the data, try a 'clean'.

Open Command Prompt (Admin) and run:

diskpart
list disk
select disk X ← (MAKE SURE this is the USB disk)
attributes disk clear readonly
online disk
clean
create partition primary
format fs=ntfs quick
assign letter=G
exit

antspants · 2026-06-28T05:35:17-0400

You may have luck using RUFUS if you tick the box "Select non bootable in the Boot Selection"

Djard · 2026-06-28T22:32:25-0400

Thank you for lending a hand. The Windows "clean" command to wipe the drive failed. Fortunately DiskGenius, free version, helped. I deleted all the partitions on the USB drive, created a new (single) partition, allocated the volume then formatted it, assigning an available drive letter. Yay!

Macrium Reflect may be good for imaging, but an attempt to clone opens Pandora's box. I assigned dive letter M to the destination drive, but it assigned C. Hence local disk C on my PC could not access drive C on the destination USB drive. Moreover, it named a volume on my local disk with the USB drive name. And it created unallocated space adjacent to the EFI partition, so now I must move the unallocated space, in order to merge it with the primary partition.

My bad for nor researching Macrium: it might have been the gold standard before, but it is a horror show in Windows 11, even with RAM security disabled. In my opinion, it is crapware.

antspants · 2026-06-28T23:39:37-0400

Djard said:
Thank you for lending a hand. The Windows "clean" command to wipe the drive failed. Fortunately DiskGenius, free version, helped. I deleted all the partitions on the USB drive, created a new (single) partition, allocated the volume then formatted it, assigning an available drive letter. Yay!

Great news.

I use Hasleo. But I only do simple tasks. It's all I need.

antspants - Tips for using Hasleo Backup (Free) for the first time

This Tutorial will help guide you with using Hasleo Backup (Free) for the first time. A step by step process for creating a Windows 11 system image which is a comprehensive backup of your entire computer, including the operating system, installed programs, system settings, and personal files...

www.elevenforum.com

Djard · 2026-06-29T00:14:43-0400

If your system has a fatal crash or is locked by ransomware (e.g. a download fron the bogus "PC App Store"), where you are locked out of your HDD, can Hasleo help you recover?

I am going to try Rescuezilla on a bootable Ventoy bootable USB stick, with the OS (Linux or Ubunto) is on the bootable USB stick. I understand my saved image of my primary drive can be restored from an external USB drive.

glasskuter · 2026-06-29T00:53:34-0400

Djard said:
Macrium: it might have been the gold standard before, but it is a horror show in Windows 11,

Macrium is far from a horror show and is great reliable software. Version 8 hasn't been supported since 1/2024. Macrium X is still the gold standard, but one has to pay to use it. It is now a subscription only software and no longer has a free version. There are still a few good free imaging/cloning softwares out there, Haselo being one of them. I use both Macrium and Haselo. But nothing has knocked Macrium off its perch as being the gold standard yet....according to tech sites...and my own opinion after using it for 15 years.

Scannerman · 2026-06-29T03:06:11-0400

glasskuter said:
Macrium is far from a horror show and is great reliable software. Version 8 hasn't been supported since 1/2024. Macrium X is still the gold standard, but one has to pay to use it. It is now a subscription only software and no longer has a free version. There are still a few good free imaging/cloning softwares out there, Haselo being one of them. I use both Macrium and Haselo. But nothing has knocked Macrium off its perch as being the gold standard yet....according to tech sites...and my own opinion after using it for 15 years.

IMO the real horror show was Win 11. Macrium is hardly to be blamed for this. MS seriously dropped the ball on backward compatibility in their dubious pursuit of security protocols and they don't care. So much software has been rendered either incompatible or obsolete at the advent of Windows 11. Perhaps things will change over time but I wouldn't hold my breath as Win 11 has already been around for 5 years and no doubt the focus will be on the next sorry excuse for an operating system. Just my opinion of course, but my experience with Win 11 over the years has been greatly wanting.

Djard · 2026-06-29T03:35:49-0400

You are correct. I lost the ability to use my paid copy of Acronis True Image after buying a new PC with Windows 11 pro. Have you ever cloned an entire drive onto another with Macrium?

glasskuter · 2026-06-29T04:24:08-0400

Djard said:
Have you ever cloned an entire drive onto another with Macrium?

Though some here do, I never clone. I restore an image instead using Macrium's recovery media. It's my opinion that restoring an image is safer from corruption as opposed to cloning.

I bought new larger system drives for 2 of my systems last year. Restored images to both of them. Macrium allowed me to to size my partitions on the larger drive the way I wanted during the restore. I believe one can do the same with Haselo but I have never done it..If one encounters boot issues Macrium's "fix boot issues" can fix most of them.works great to fix them. I also never have more than one drive installed in my system that has an EFI partition. Only my OS drive has an EFI. This is where folks get into boot troubles.

cereberus · 2026-06-29T04:33:22-0400

Disk is shown as offline.

Try this.

If your hard drive is disconnected or marked as offline in Windows, bring it back online to access your files.

Right-click the Start button and select Disk Management.

Locate the offline drive in the bottom section (e.g., Disk 1 or Disk 2).Right-click the Disk # box on the far left side and select Online.

The drive status will change, and it will become visible in File Explorer.

kelper · 2026-06-29T04:37:09-0400

cereberus said:
Disk is shown as offline.

Try this.

If your hard drive is disconnected or marked as offline in Windows, bring it back online to access your files.

Right-click the Start button and select Disk Management.

Locate the offline drive in the bottom section (e.g., Disk 1 or Disk 2).Right-click the Disk # box on the far left side and select Online.

The drive status will change, and it will become visible in File Explorer.

I suggested that in post 4. Anyway, he's sorted now.

Need help to fix an inaccessible USB drive?

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