Dec 16, 2020 • Filed to: USB Recovery • Proven solutions
How Can I Fix my Flash Drive Not Recognized?
It allows you to format partition to exFAT, FAT32, NTFS, Ext2 and Ext3 and Ext4 on an external hard drive, internal hard drive, USB flash drive and SD card. It can work with Windows 10/8/8.1/7, XP, and Vista. And it can format large drive beyond 32GB to FAT32. Attach the drive to your Mac. Launch Disk Utility (from Applications Utilities Disk Utility). Select the drive in the left-hand sidebar. It offers a tool “Disk Manager”. It can help Mac users securely and quickly format USB flash drive under Mac OS. Very easy to use and 100% safe. The top 5 USB flash drive formatting software for Mac can help us easily and securely format USB flash drive under Mac OS. Just select one of them to format USB flash drive under Mac OS. Select “Mac OS Extended (Journaled),” or your preferred format type. The former option can help ensure that the USB drive is made fully compatible with your Mac, since most USB drives are preformatted for Windows computers by default.
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?'
On the left side of the window are the drives connected to the computer. Select the capacity of the drive respective to the one containing the device you wish to format then click the Erase tab. Example: If the drive is called 'NO NAME', directly above that, you should see the drive capacity of 'XXXX'. Select this capacity.
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
Bernina serial numbers. 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
- 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 Can%27t find the gmetrix tamplates folder. 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.
Mac Flash Drive To Pc
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
How to format internal and/or external drive to work properly on Mac and Windows computers?
External data storage devices such as USB flash drives, external Hard Disk Drives (HDDs), and Solid State Drives (SSDs) provide one of the easiest ways to transfer files between separate computers without accessing the Internet. This option is often used when attempting to move very large files. The method is also chosen by people who work with media data that imposes various limitations and automatic optimizations when transferring via Internet. Despite the advantages of using external data storage to transfer content, some experienced users encounter problems caused by the difference between operating systems. This article addresses these issues.
A common issue discussed by users within various technical support forums is that of USB flash drives not working on their computers. This is a cross-platform problem that Windows and macOS users often experience. For example, a photographer may provide you with a USB flash drive with stored photos and videos from your birthday party, but you cannot access them on your system. This is the result of differences between operating systems on computers. Windows and macOS use separate file system formats. PCs with Windows operating systems use New Technology File System (NTFS) while Macs with macOS operating systems use Hierarchical File System (HFS+). By default, USB flash drives and external storage are formatted with the NTFS file system - this works flawlessly on PCs, while Mac computers are able to read data in the format, but struggle to write using this type of storage. Fortunately, there is a simple solution: format your external storage with the File Allocation Table (FAT32) or Extended File Allocation Table (exFAT) file system. Keynote download for mac 10.13 6. In this article, we describe the differences between these two file systems and how to format external storage using a Mac computer.
Table of Contents:
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Which file system to choose - FAT32 or exFAT?
As mentioned above, both file systems are compatible with Windows or macOS/OS X operating systems. Naturally, the question is: which should you choose? To make the choice easier, we describe both file systems and their features below.
Starting with FAT32 [on a Mac, known as MS-DOS (FAT)], this file system is fully compatible with all versions of Windows and Mac operating systems. Therefore, even the oldest versions of operating systems such as Windows XP SP1 and OS x 10.5 Leopard are compatible. As well as computers, the FAT32 file system is supported by PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and most cameras. This particular file system does contain file size restrictions. For example, the maximum size of supported files is 4GB (you cannot write files larger than 4GB). Also, you cannot create a startup drive for Mac computers within storage media that uses the FAT32 file system. If, however, you are not planning to use external storage to transfer large files or create any executable partitions (such as a Mac startup drive) the FAT32 file system might be an option, since this format is supported in all versions of the operating system.
Best Format For Usb Flash Drive Mac And Pc
exFAT is a newer file system format and has the biggest advantage when compared with FAT32: there are no restrictions on file or partition sizes stored. Therefore, you can write a file of, for example, 1TB size and create partitions of 5TB within the device. Despite this improvement of available data size, some older versions of operating systems are no longer compatible with this file system format. The oldest versions of operating systems compatible with exFAT are listed below:
- Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6.5 or later
- OS X Lion
- Windows XP SP2 or later (with an additional update for exFAT support)
- Windows Vista SP1 or later
- Windows 7
Unfortunately, as well as some old versions of operating systems, the exFAT file system format is not supported by various cameras, video games consoles, and other devices able to read and/or write to external storage. If you will be using a USB flash drive or external storage device with any of these, the required format is FAT32. Otherwise, if the device is to be used only with computers with modern versions of operating systems, the recommended format is exFAT.
Format the drive with Mac computer
Firstly, bear in mind that formatting the drive will erase all content stored on it. Mac computers are capable of formatting any storage device (internal or external) such as HDD/SSD, USB flash drive, and external storage. Even if the Mac is unable to mount the storage, following this method will enable you to format the storage. Begin by connecting the storage device to your Mac, and then launch Disk Utility using Spotlight. Simply use the keyboard shortcut of Command and Spacebar, type Disk Utility, and then press return. Alternatively, open Finder and go to Applications, open Utilities, and then launch Disk Utility. Select the drive you wish to format from the list in the left sidebar of the Disk Utility window.
Format Hard Drive For Mac And Pc
Then click the Erase button at the top of the window, in the new pop-up window, and type the name of drive. Then click the drop-down menu beside Format and select MS-DOS (FAT) - the FAT32 file format - or exFAT. These formats are described above.
If you are not planning to use this drive as the Windows startup disk or use it with the oldest version of the operating system, do not change the Scheme. Select Master Boot Record.
Finally, when all preferences are set, click the Erase button. The formatting process duration depends on size and type of the drive. A hard disk drive will take longer to format than a flash drive. NOTE: formatting will erase all existing data on the drive.