Why the computer does not see a USB flash drive: reasons and solutions

There are several common reasons why a computer does not see a USB flash drive.

Hardware Problems

The first thing that should be excluded in this situation is hardware reasons, that is, a malfunction of the drive itself or the USB connector. How to do it?

On the bodies of most flash drives there isspecial LED. Inserting a working USB flash drive into a working USB port, you will notice the flashing of this LED. If it does not blink and does not light up at all - the problem is with a flash drive or USB port.

Lack or lack of nutrition

The reason that a flash drive can not be detected canTo serve as a shortage or lack of power to USB-ports. This problem most often occurs when you connect the USB flash drive to the port located in the front of the system unit. It may not even be connected to the power supply. To test, insert the USB flash drive into the port located behind the system unit. Is the problem solved? Excellent!

In some cases, the PC does not see the USB flash drive due to the lack of power of the computer itself. This is due to power supply problems or excessive over-current in the USB hub or port.

In case you have a fairly old modellaptop, this problem can be caused by a large amount of flash memory. Unfortunately, in this situation nothing can be done - you have to use a different drive.

And, finally, the computer may not recognizeUSB-stick, if it has already connected to an excessive number of peripherals. In this case, the problem is easily solved by temporarily unplugging unnecessary devices and inserting the USB flash drive into the port again.

Failure flash drive

If the above methods did not help, thenthe problem, most likely, in the flash drive itself. To verify this, try to connect it to some other computer (or, if possible, to several).

If the flash drive is not detected on other PCs, itexactly broken. In most cases USB-drives can be repaired, but the cost of fixing may be higher than the cost of the flash drive itself. Therefore, the help of a repair specialist should be addressed only if there are very important data on the flash drive that you need to restore. Otherwise it's usually easier and cheaper to just buy a new one.

BIOS Settings

It happens that there are no problems with eitherUSB-port, or with the drive itself, but the PC still does not see the USB flash drive. What to do in this situation? Perhaps it's in the operating system settings. For example, the BIOS can turn off USB support.

In another situation, the OS when connecting a flash drive canissue an error message informing you that the device you connected is not recognized. In this case, the icon in the form of a yellow exclamation mark will appear in the place of the icon for safe removal of the flash drive. This can be caused by several reasons.

The device is assigned a busy letter

This problem occurs quite often: OS when connecting a flash drive assigns to it a letter already occupied by another connected disk.

To resolve this issue, follow these steps:

• 
  Go to the Start menu - Control Panel, open the Administration tab.


• 
  Select Computer Management - Disk Management.


• 
  In the right part of the window, you will see a list of installed disks. Find it in your flash drive.


• 
  Clicking on it with the right mouse button, select "Change drive letter or path to disk" from the menu.


• 
  Specify a letter that is not already occupied by any disks in the system, click OK.

Lack of drivers

Often the reason that the computer does not seeUSB flash drive, are obsolete drivers. In this situation, you can try to update the drivers of the motherboard. If you do not know the model of your motherboard, you can clarify it with the help of the program AIDA64 (Everest).

Also, there may be no drivers for USB. To verify this, go to the Start menu - Control Panel - Device Manager and find the USB controllers in the list. If you see that there are yellow question marks in front of one or more USB devices, this means that the computer can not find the driver for the USB flash drive. In this case, you must remove the device and then reinstall it. Occasionally, to solve the problem, you must completely remove all drivers for USB controllers, so that the operating system after the reboot prompted the offer to install them again. But without extreme necessity to this method it is better not to resort.

Be sure to download all drivers exclusively from official sites. Installing drivers downloaded from questionable sites can cause significant damage to the computer.

Viruses in the system

Finding out why the PC does not see the flash drive, you alsoYou may encounter computer viruses blocking the work of USB-drives. In this case, scan your computer or laptop anti-virus. It is not necessary to install a paid program, since there are a large number of free antivirus programs that also easily solve a similar problem.

Conflicting file systems

The computer may not be able to see the USB storage due toconflict file systems, this usually happens if the flash drive has a FAT file system. To fix the problem, try to format the drive by selecting the NTFS file system.

As you can see, we can not unequivocally answer the question why the computer does not see the flash drive. The reason can be problems of a different nature, so you need to go over all the options.