How to make Windows 10 recognise an external hard drive

Jaki has 11,000 photos on a USB drive but Windows 10 won't recognise it. What can she do?

My external USB hard drive, with 11,000 photos from Windows 7, isn't recognised by Windows 10. How do I transfer them to Windows 10 for future safekeeping? Jaki

The Universal Serial Bus (USB) connects billions of keyboards, mice, joysticks, printers, external hard drives and other peripherals to roughly 1.5bn personal computers, and more than 3bn mobile phones use the smaller Micro USB and newer USB-C versions. It generally works pretty well but most people have probably suffered from a USB device failing or not being recognised.