Can't connect USB drive to STi7. Roon doesn't see any files. Only internal drive is seen

Internal HDD mounted fine and shows up in Local Storage of ST. Ripped a few cds to it. Works great in Roon.

Have several exFAT USB drives (USB 2.1, 3.1) all with FLAC rips. Each album was ripped via EZCDDA extractor and sits in its own folder on the USB drive. Worked on all other streaming systems I’ve used them on.

Have mounted the drives in SonicOrbiter (they show up in drop down menu on USB mount page) but they do not show up in Roon. I say ‘drives’ plural because I have tried several different drives, and none of them show up in Roon anywhere in …/STORAGE/…

The drives connected to USB do not show up on my win11 networked laptop’s File Explorer, either. However, the ripped cds stored on internal storage HDD show up fine.

I’ve read every thread I can find here, and it seems many have had this issue going back several years. However, I can’t find anywhere that spells out the resolution. Just closed threads. Can someone help me figure this out? Thanks in advance!