Dec 21, 2020 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions
How Can I Fix my Flash Drive Not Recognized?
Select USB flash drive on the left panel of Disk Utility, and click 'First Aid' at the top toolbar and click 'Run'. Disk Utility will repair any errors on the drive automatically. Select the USB drive and click 'Unmount' at the top toolbar, unplug the USB and plug it back in 10-15 seconds. Shut down your Mac, then unplug all nonessential devices from your Mac. If you're repairing an external drive, make sure that it's connected directly to your Mac using a cable that you know is good. Then turn the drive off and back on. If your disk still doesn't appear in Disk Utility, your Mac might need service.
Question: 'My USB flash drive is not recognized when I plug it to the computer. What causes such a problem to happen? Is my USB drive got broken? How to fix the flash drive not recognized issue? Also, can I recover data from the USB flash drive not recognized?'
Solved: USB not recognized is the common problem reported many users, it could be broken or other reason caused the drive error. But don't worry, you can follow the next guide to fix the flash drive not recognized error on Windows and Mac, then recover files from flash drive with Recoverit Data Recovery program.
What Caused the Flash Drive Not Recognized on Computer?
Several root causes would result in the not recognized flash drive issue. They should be addressed so that you will not need to deal with the issue(s) for a long period.
Port Related Issues:: To determine if this is a port problem, test every USB port that you have with different flash drives. This could be either hardware or software issues or both. In this case, you would need a professional to help you correct this.
USB Formatting Issue: This is the most probable reason your computer could not detect your flash drive. The inability to format flash drive properly before the first use could cause problems later on.
Driver Issue: The drivers may not be available, corrupted, or outdated which would make the flash drive not Recognized.
Hard Drive Related Issues: A glitch in your machine's hard drive will not allow anything on it to work in a good and perfect way. This hardware issue should be addressed because it will affect more than your computer's ability to recognize a flash drive.
Operating System Related Issues: Sometimes, if your OS is not updated with the necessary updates as often as possible, it would cause the system to not recognize the flash drive. This could be simply rectified by updating the necessary components.
4 Ways to Fix the USB Flash Drive Not Recognized Problems on Windows
Depending on what is the root cause of the problem, you may only need to do one of these four steps or all of them. Follow these solutions step-by-step to resolve your problem.
Way 1: Scan Flash Drive to Find the Issue
- Plug the flash drive into your USB port.
- Go to My Computer and right-click on the flash drive. Open the Properties
- Open the Tools tab and click Check now'¦
- It may take some time to complete the scan. Once finished, it will tell you what the flash drive's problem is.
Way 2: Reformat the Flash Drive
- Right-click on the flash drive and click on Format'¦, the Format window will pop up.
- Under the File system toggle it between NTFS and FAT32. Click Start.
Way 3: Perform driver updates
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- Open the Run command and type in msc in the field. Click OK.
- This will open the Device Manager. Find the Universal Serial Bus controllers.
- Expand the menu and right-click on the Generic USB Hub. Click on Update Driver Software'¦
Way 4: Operating System Updates
- Go to Control Panel, then System and security.
- Under the Windows Update section, click on Check for Updates.
- If it is not updated (the notification is not green in color), update it accordingly as indicated by the system.
- Follow the updating wizard and restart your computer accordingly.
Video Tutorial on How to Fix USB Device Not Recognized
3 Ways to Fix the Flash Drive Not Recognized Problem on Mac
Like in Windows, your resolution method will be determined by the root cause of the problem. These are the three ways that you can do to fix flash drive not Recognized issue.
Way 1: Manually Connect the Flash Drive
- Go to Application and click on Utilities.
- A pop-up window will appear and click on the highlighted commands as marked in the image below:
- Under Devices, click External Devices to manually connect the unrecognizable flash drive.
Way 2: Retune PRAM
- Shut down your Mac.
- Press the Power button and subsequently hold down the Command-Option-P-R This should be done before the grey screen appears.
- Your Mac should reboot itself. Let it go after the start-up chime.
Way 3: Format Mac's Drive
- Press the Command-Spacebar buttons simultaneously, plug in the flash drive and go to the Application Click on the Disk Utility option.
- You will be able to find the flash drives that need to be fixed in the left panel.
- Click on the Erase button to complete the process.
What's Next?
Now that the flash drive not Recognized problem is solved on your Windows or Mac computer, make sure you had back-up all important documents in the flash drive. This is to ensure that you will be able to access the files stored in the flash drive should it happens again.
You should also check if there is any accidental data loss from the drive. Should you find things missing, use a flash drive data recovery tool to help you recover loss documents do this immediately before it is overwritten by new data.
How to Recover Data from Flash Drive Not Recognized on Windows
When you fix the USB flash drive not recognized with format solution, all your data on the drive will be got formatted and lost. On this guide, we will show you how to recover data from flash drive not recognized on Windows. Recoverit Data Recovery software can easily help you recover lost files from flash drive, even the drive got damaged/corrupted, formatted, virus attack and the file system crashed.
Recoverit - The Best USB Flash Drive Recovery Software
- Undeleted files from flash drive which not recognized on Windows and Mac.
- Recover files from USB flash drive due to accidentally deleted, formatted and damaged/corrupted.
Steps to Recover Lost Data from Flash Drive
Download and install Recoverit Flash Drive Recovery on your computer, follow the next simple steps to perform flash drive data recovery on Windows computer.
Step 1. Launch Recoverit Data Recovery program, select the 'External Device Recovery' mode to get started.
Step 2. Make sure your flash drive detected on the computer, select it, and click 'Start' to proceed.
Step 3. The flash drive recovery software will start to scan the device to search and restore your data files.
Step 4. Finally, you can check all the recovered files. Select your data and recover back by clicking the 'Recover' button.
If you are a MAC user, you should download Recoverit Data Recovery for Mac or follow the guide to perform flash drive recovery on Mac.
USB Solution
- Recover USB Drive
- Format USB Drive
- Fix/Repair USB Drive
- Know USB Drive
A USB flash drives stores all the data in its memory similar to a hard drive. The operating system can, later on, fetch this data when required to be accessed. There can be various issues that may turn your USB drive data inaccessible such as if the drive is unmounted improperly from the port then it can lead to data corruption. Another reason for the stored data corruption can be invalid data in the Master Boot Record (MBR) or Partition Boot Record (PBR) or directory structure on the USB drive.
There can be various other reasons also that may make your USB corrupt or unresponsive. This may happen either due to logical corruption or physical corruption. Some common physical corruption issues are broken stems and connectors, dead drives (no power supply), broken circuit or NAND gate, not recognized, RAW, need to format, not accessible, and Dead Drives, etc.
How to Recover Data from an Inaccessible USB Drive?
To recover data from an inaccessible USB or Flash drive, first, you must be able to identify the exact reason leading to the problem while reading the USB drive.
Reasons of USB corruption or inaccessibility can be because of:
- Logical Issues
- Physical Issues
Recovering Files from Logical Issues
If there are some logical/ software errors with the USB drive, you can easily fix it. You need to repair the file structure so that the USB flash drive can be used again.
This is how you can scan for logical issues using Windows:
- Insert the USB drive into the USB port of your system.
- Go to This PC or My Computer>Removable Disk icon.
- Right click the Removable Disk Icon and open its Properties.
- Click on the Tools tab.
- Click Check Now button.
- You will be given two check disk options 'Automatically fix file system errors' and 'Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors'.
- Check both checkboxes.
- Click Start. This will initiate the scanning process.
- Click Close after the scan process is completed.
If you are using Windows 10 or a lower version then carry out the following steps to repair the USB Flash Drive:
- Insert the USB drive into the USB port of your system
- Go to This PC or My Computer>Removable Disk icon.
- Right click the Removable Disk Icon and open its Properties.
- Click on the Tools tab.
- Click 'Rebuild' button
- Let the scan process get completed. Close the scan window once it's completed.
- Right-click the icon of the USB flash drive and 'Eject'. Then remove the drive from the USB port.
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Hopefully, this would help you solve the problem else you can try recovering your USB data using a professional usb drive data recovery tool.
Most data loss issues can be solved by using a professional USB flash drive data recovery software. You can free download such program and install it on your PC to begin scanning the device and recover data. Try Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows that supports scanning of large capacity USB drives and traces inaccessible or formatted files with their attributes and size intact.
How to Recover Files From a Corrupt USB Flash Driveusing Stellar Data Recovery Professional?
You may restore your important files, documents, pictures, and more from a corrupt USB flash drive easily with the help of the best data recovery software i.e. Stellar Data Recovery Professional. This DIY software can retrieve all types of files from a corrupt, inaccessible, or formatted USB drives.
You just need to follow the given steps to get back your data:
1. Download & install Stellar Data Recovery Professionalon your Windows PC.
2. From the ‘Select What to Recover' screen, click Everything or select specified data, and click Next. [See Image 1]
3. On Recover From screen, choose the drive and click Scan. [See Image 2]
4. The scanned results will show on the screen. You may preview the files before recovering them.
5. Select the files you want to restore and click Recover. [See Image 3]
6. Browse and choose the desired location to store your retrieved data. [See Image 4]
[Caution:Do not save the recovered data in the same USB drive. Always use another drive or storage media to save this data to avoid data overwriting.]
7. Click Start-saving and wait till the process is complete. [See Image 5]
Now that you have safely recovered the files from the corrupt USB flash drive, proceed further to fix USB drive corrupt due to logical reasons with the following methods:
Recovering Files from Physical Issues.
If you have a physical error such as a broken connector, circuit board, NAND memory chip of the drive, then the hardware needs to be replaced or repaired. Doing-it-yourself can lead to even worse situations. Better you get help from the experts in this area. You can hire any trusted data recoverycompany like Stellar Data Recovery which is specialized in recovering data from a physically damaged USB drive.
Below we have mentioned solutions to some common causes of physical issues with your USB drive.
a. Broken Stems and Connectors, & Dead Drives (no power to the USB):
A common indication of the physical errors is some kind of error messages or troubles that you see after connecting the USB. Common error messages are 'Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk' or 'USB Device Not Recognized or Malfunctioned', 'you need to format the disk before using it', RAW partition, dead or unresponsive drives, and damaged controller chips and/or circuit boards.
If the silver USB connector is broken or the circuit board is damaged it leads to power supply cut-off to the USB. In such case, soldering and circuit repair is required. It's not advised to do it yourself as if anything goes wrong, you may permanently lose access to your USB and also it'll reduce the chances of getting your data successfully recovered or sometimes impossible. To deal with above physical errors, specialized equipment and expertise are required. So better you hand over it to some professional and let them deal with the scenario.
b. Error: 'Please Insert Disk into Removable Disk':
This error occurs when the flash drive controller software becomes corrupt. It can also happen if there are some issues with the NAND memory. The above error can be caused by low grade or generic NAND memory chips. With a frequent number of reads and writes, the state of the drive turns worse.
The error indicates that there is some issue with the NAND memory chips. Most probably the metadata stored in the NAND memory is corrupted or wiped and it can't be mounted then, thus turning the drive unreadable. Whenever you try to read the drive, you will get the error message 'Please insert a disk into Removable Disk'. Also, if you try to check the drive size, it usually shows its capacity as 0 MB. As the device cannot be mounted on windows, if you check Device Manager under Disk drives, a different name for the USB drive will be listed. Also, the Disk Management shows a drive letter with No Media. Will minecraft windows 10 work on mac.
In such case, you need to search for manufacturers that perform USB data recovery or flash drive data recovery.
Mac tools customer service number. c. Undetectable USB Flash Drive:
You may not be able to use your USB drive because of some problems with the USB port, not with the USB drive. So, before performing any repair of the USB drive also make sure that the USB port is working fine.
To test the USB Port remove the USB drive, reboot your computer, and test the USB drive again. See if it works. It is possible that one port may not be working but all others are working fine. So try each port of your computer. If this doesn't help, try the USB drive on some other computer. Sites to download mac games.
Sometimes, the Installed copy of Windows OS may not be able to recognize your USB drive due to some USB version limitations.
You can fix an undetectable USB Flash Drive by drive recognition:
- Go to Start> Control Panel> Device Manager.
- Expand the list next to 'Disk Drives' option.
- You can see a down facing arrow over your USB drive. Double click it and choose the option to 'Enable Device'.
- Click Next.
- Click ‘Next' again.
- Finally, click Finish.
After this, you need to assign the drive letter. To do so follow given steps:
- Go to Start>Control Panel>System and Security>Administrative Tools then choose 'Computer Management'.
- Right, click the USB drive. Select the option to 'Change Drive Letter and Paths'.
- Click ADD and then click OK.
- Now, assign any available drive letter to the USB drive by clicking it.
- Right, click the USB to designate it as 'Online'.
If this fails, Windows automated 'Fix it For Me' service can resolve the issue. If this also doesn't help, then modifying the system registry will help you tackle the issue. We wouldn't suggest you go for this option as it may harm your OS.
Conclusion
A USB Drive can become corrupt or unresponsive by any way of Logical or Physical issues. However, you can always securely use a professional USB data recovery tool like Stellar Data Recovery Professional for Windows to recover files after your USB Drive becomes Corrupt or Unresponsive.
In case of any query, do let us know in the comment section below!