File Explorer not detecting the flash drive and its content may be because of a drive letter-based error. And if the flash drive has hardware faults, it can even go unnoticed from the motherboard’s point of view. Driver-related errors would even pop an error message like “USB device not recognized”. In any case, this article will help you to deal with various scenarios related to the undetected flash drive problem.
What Causes Flash Drive Not Detected Issue?
The cause of the flash drive not being detected can be issues with the port you’ve inserted your flash drive on. Or sometimes, even the power supply can cause problems.
How to Fix an Undetected Flash Drive?
Before moving on to fixes, you should quickly check whether the ports are causing the problem or the device is. You can try to blow compressed air inside the port or try to use another USB port on the computer. If the issue persists, you can go along the listed solutions to fix the undetected flash drive problem:
Run Hardware Troubleshooter
To detect and solve issues related to hardware and other peripheral devices attached to the computer, Windows has provided inbuilt troubleshooter. It is able to automatically fix the problem or at least advise what can be done further. You can run the troubleshooter by following the steps below:
Update USB Drivers
Like any other hardware device, the flash drive’s proper and updated drivers communicate with the motherboard and, thus, Windows. Generic USB drivers come bundled with every operating system, and the OS is expected to update the drivers automatically. But, sometimes, the OS may not properly update them, causing issues in recognizing the attached flash drive. You will have to initiate the update from the Device Manager manually. Steps for which are given below: Let Windows install the latest version of the USB driver for you.
Reinstall Drivers
If updating doesn’t work, or you have the latest driver, the problem may be a corrupted driver. To fix it, you will have to reinstall the USB driver. That way, the inaccurately assigned driver will be replaced with the accurate one. You can follow the steps mentioned below to reinstall USB drivers: The driver should reappear. And Windows would also toggle between another available USB driver within its driver stack. Or in some cases, you may have to use the driver from the manufacturer of the flash drive. You can download one from their official site and can follow the onscreen instructions to install it. Moreover, if you are having a problem with a specific PC recognizing the flash driver, USB Mass Storage Device might be troublesome. You can proceed with the above steps to reinstall USB Mass Storage Device under Universal Serial Bus Controller and fix the issue.
Manually Change the Drive Letter
If the driver isn’t an issue for you, the drive letter for your flash can be. This is because Windows operating system relies on a letter-based file system to identify the disk/drives attached to it. So, the File Explorer automatically assigns an available drive letter to a new drive connected to the computer. But, this assignment process can run into conflict sometimes, and drivers may be assigned with the wrong letter or no letter at all. Such misconfigured assignment makes the attached flash drive inaccessible from Explorer. However, Disk Management would list the drive, also providing the feature to change the drive letter. And by changing the drive letter, you will be able to fix the drive letter issue. The steps to change the drive letter of your flash drive include the following: However, if you have tweaked the settings related to the mounting point of your flash drive, it can show up in a different folder of a defined location rather than showing up as a different drive with a letter.
Run chkdsk to Fix Errors
Even after changing the drive letter, you may not see the flash drive on the File Explorer or may be unable to access the content within it. Or Disk Management may flag your flash drive with “No Media” at times. These cases indicate that there may be logical and file system-related errors in the drive. If you haven’t already, you can change the drive letter by following the above steps. And then, perform a Windows chkdsk command-line troubleshooter to fix your flash drive’s logical problems and bad sectors. The steps to run the command are listed below: Replace D: with the drive letter you assigned to your flash drive.
Format the Drive and Recover Data
Data within the flash drive can get corrupted if the drive is ejected improperly or in the middle of data transfer. And some amounts of corrupted data can even corrupt other data on the drive, making the whole drive unusable. And severe corruption of data isn’t fixable through chkdsk. So, to at least protect your data and make the drive usable afterward, you will have to format it. The only catch here is you will have to recover your data using third-party applications after formatting the drive. First, to format the drive, you can follow the steps below: Now, you will have to recover data from it. But, it’s already gone? Because the drive was formatted? Not at all. The data on the blocks of the flash drive is still present rather, the drive is just allocated as empty. So that any other data can be overwritten over already occupied blocks, since it’s just formatted, the previous data isn’t overwritten and, thus, recoverable. To recover, you will have to use the free Testdisk tool. It is an open-source and CUI-based application that helps you salvage your data. Download the latest version of Testdisk and follow the steps below: Some other paid data recovery apps provide a GUI interface with more features.
Dealing with Physical Damage
If the flash drive is still unrecognized after looking at everything under the hood, the chances of physical damage are high. May it be the broken circuity or the damage within the USB stick, a faulty flash drive is likely to get unrecognized by any computer. The flash drive may have even exceeded its read/write cycle because of extensive use, though in rare cases. It would be hard to salvage the actual physical drive for any physical damage. However, depending on the damage, you can recover data with a recovery expert’s help.
