
When your drives, external hard disks, and USB flash drives are infected or suffer from a power failure etc. In most cases the “drive is not accessible” error might occur unexpectedly.
Also, Windows can prevent you from accessing the files and folders on the disk. When you are prompted with the error, take a look at the following scenarios to determine the specific fix accordingly.


Below is a different error and the file system here is CDFS.

Scenario 1: As you can see, due to security policies configured by the organization, the file is inaccessible due to DriveLock implementation.


Therefore, proceed to troubleshoot this as it related to your environment 🙂
Scenario 2: When the following error is display in the diagram below, most times this has nothing to do with the permission as described here. UDF, FAT, CDFS, etc., does not offer any Security in terms of permissions. Change your File system to NTFS and you will see the security tab. Before you change the File system, save all your data somewhere in case it gets corrupted!
This specific error has nothing to do with permission or missing security tab as claimed.
Scenario 3: Unable to find File Explorer in the Group Policy Editor when resolving the security tab missing under properties.
Note: This can be hidden by administrators and you would not have permission to view it. in this case, see the following links
– Update Policy Settings: Unable to find File Explorer in the Group Policy Editor when resolving security tab missing under properties, https://techdirectarchive.com/2020/05/19/update-policy-settings-unable-to-find-file-explorer-in-the-group-policy-editor-when-resolving-security-tab-missing-under-properties/
– How to Update central store for Group Policy Administrative Templates, https://techdirectarchive.com/2020/05/19/how-to-update-central-store-for-group-policy-administrative-templates/