USB drive has no errors, but Windows 7 won't recognize it. How do I fix it?

Question

I have an external USB drive that was working just fine, and then the internal SATA drive on my PC crashed. After replacing the internal drive, upgrading the processor, and reinstalling Windows 7, I plugged the USB drive back in, and below is what I got. Update: for clarity, when I try to access the drive, I get an "access denied" error message.

I downloaded the Seagate tools and ran all the tests, which passed. I also found a forum post indicating that chkdisk can be used to force a USB drive eject, which I also tried. It ejected, but then after disconnecting and reconnecting, I got the same result.

What can I do?

Update:

Answer 1

Try opening it anyway, the icon may just be corrupted in the icon cache and the drive perfectly fine.

Answer 2

Try typing takeown /r G:\* at the command line.

*_{the /r makes it recursive [apply to subdirectories also]}

For more info see Microsoft's Technet website:

[Takeown] enables an administrator to recover access to a file that previously was denied, by making the administrator the owner of the file.

Answer 3

Try to check it in another pc, or just boot from any linux live-cd (Ubuntu f.e.) to check usb health in real situation. Also maybe BIOS resetting can solve the problem.

Answer 4

Looks like it was a matter of ownership. When I replaced my disk and reinstalled Windows, my user had a new Sid, so despite having the same username as before, to Windows, it looked like some other unknown user owned the drive and therefore denied me access. Once I changed ownership of the drive at the files on it, I was able to regain access.

Here's a step-by-step reference for anyone with the same issue.