If you use external USB drives and storage devices, you can safely disconnect and disconnect them in the graphical desktop environment of your Linux system with a few clicks. Devices issued in this way will no longer be accessible, as the associated block device names will be lost and the hardware will be de-energized. By default, we can only re-use hardware by physically reconnecting it, which requires human intervention. There may be a need to still have access to our software-disconnected, turned-off storage device without having to physically unplug it and then reconnect it. If for any reason you want to be able to access your logically disconnected and unplugged USB storage device, this tutorial will look at how to restart and make available your external HDD, flash drive, or card reader without having to physically reconnect it.