USB memory stick no longer showing up (Win10)

NIMAN

I have a Sandisk USB stick, worked fine for several years.

Lately when I plug it in, it still makes the little sound that sticks make when you attach them to your laptop.

However, it doesn't appear as a designated drive.

In Device Manager, it is showing up, says its working properly.

Anyone got any idea what happened it, and how to fix it?

Thanks

smuggler.ie

Does it gets drive letter assigned in Disk Manager?

PropJoe10

As the last person said, check in Disk Manager. Go Start > Run (Windows key + R simultaneously should bring it up), type in diskmgmt.msc and see if the USB appears in there. If it does, see if there's a drive letter assigned.

NIMAN

No access to laptop right now.
Will try that soon.

johnnybmac

The "Several years" part would tell me to buy a new flash drive. They do have a finite existence after all...

Here's one i've bought, DRIVE

NIMAN

johnnybmac wrote: »

The "Several years" part would tell me to buy a new flash drive. They do have a finite existence after all...

Here's one i've bought, DRIVE

I have a few other ones, plus a couple of external hdd too.

FanadMan

johnnybmac wrote: »

The "Several years" part would tell me to buy a new flash drive. They do have a finite existence after all...

Here's one i've bought, DRIVE

You didn't go for the 2TB sticks for €0.99
A friend of mine gave me one that he had backed up loads of photos to. After about 1Gb, everything was overwritten.
It really did show up as 2TB but could only hold 1GB.

wotzgoingon

Had the same problem last week and used diskpart in command prompt to format it and then it worked perfectly. Don't quick format.

NIMAN

PropJoe10 wrote: »

As the last person said, check in Disk Manager. Go Start > Run (Windows key + R simultaneously should bring it up), type in diskmgmt.msc and see if the USB appears in there. If it does, see if there's a drive letter assigned.

It shows up as a 3rd drive (laptop has a ssd + hdd) but there is no letter assigned to it.

At the top, where it gives volume info, it is giving correct size but saying is it 100% free. This should be wrong, and it had plenty stored on it.

Might just have to reformat it.

smuggler.ie

NIMAN wrote: »

It shows up as a 3rd drive (laptop has a ssd + hdd) but there is no letter assigned to it.

At the top, where it gives volume info, it is giving correct size but saying is it 100% free. This should be wrong, and it had plenty stored on it.

Might just have to reformat it.

In Disk Mgr :
right click on drive and select Change Drive letter and Paths.... >> Add >> select letter available from list (DO NOT USE A or B) >> OK >> OK
Check if drive appear in File Explorer

NIMAN

smuggler.ie wrote: »

In Disk Mgr :
right click on drive and select Change Drive letter and Paths.... >> Add >> select letter available from list (DO NOT USE A or B) >> OK >> OK
Check if drive appear in File Explorer

Won't let me.

I'm getting an error saying:

Operation failed to complete because the disk management console view is not up to date. Refresh the view by using the refresh task.......

I have tried every option. Refresh, reboot, power down, reset with usb plugged in, with it not plugged in etc etc.

Still getting same error message each time..

Going to format it I think..

Johnboy1951

Maybe have a look at it using a Live Linux distro ........ particularly if you have anything on it you might need.

It might be some corruption of the filesystem that can be fixed.

smuggler.ie

CMD as admin, hit Enter after each command:
Diskpart
list volume
select volume # (# is number of your USB drive)
assign letter=U (providing U i not assigned to other device)

NIMAN

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Maybe have a look at it using a Live Linux distro ........ particularly if you have anything on it you might need.

It might be some corruption of the filesystem that can be fixed.

Getting too complicated for me at this level, I don't think I have anything I need on it, so might just try a reformat.

Then again, will I be able to if the laptop ain't assigning it a drive letter?

Edit: just downloaded a free bit of software called recoverit, and it's currently scanning the drive....seems to have found all the files on it , so will see how it goes from here.

..... and it was looking for money to recover them!

PropJoe10

If you're looking to recover files, I used to use this back in the day:

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

No idea if it's any good these days!

NIMAN

PropJoe10 wrote: »

If you're looking to recover files, I used to use this back in the day:

https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva

No idea if it's any good these days!

Thanks Prop Joe

Downloaded it.
Currently recovering some files which were mildly important.

And best of all, it's free.

Thanks.

NIMAN

So Recuva did the business, only downside is that it doesn't seem to recover things as they were organised in folders, just all the individual files.

So if you had say 50 folders, everything in them is just all lumped together in the recovery.

But no odds. If it saves an important file you need, it's acceptable.