NOTE: Most thumb drives these days are probably best formatted as "exFAT", because FAT32 only supported up to 4GB file sizes. UNLESS you want absolutely maximum compatibility on really old computers (~2010 and earlier OS's like Mac OSX 10.6 or Windows XP). In this demo it didn't offer me exFAT as an option because the drive was too small. So shout out to my absolutely ancient 247 MB thumb drive, still going strong after like 15 years.
To be clear, Mac OS X Snow Leopard introduced exFAT support in one of the updates. So most likely Leopard and earlier (unless you installed Snow Leopard when it came out and never updated, or installed fresh from the install CD)
One thing that is stupid is that some Devices like printers STILL only supports FAT32 for printing or scanning documents from/to a flash drive or portable HD. Its a good thing that I dont keep files on my flash drives long term so reformatting them for use with a printer isn't too much of a problem for me (especially because scanning over WIFI is slowe than scanning to my USB drive)
Ahh, didn't read this until I was ready to hit post. I just wrote a comment about this. I will just add if you ever tried to add a movie to a completely empty drive and it says that there isn't enough room this is why.
I've been searching for a resolution to this issue i've had for a few days with no clear idea - most places were attempting to get me to download programs ect, this was so simple and straightforward thank you!
Another way is to type fdisk in the seach bar and it will also show up. fdisk was the name of the old disk partition software for DOS, and Windows 10 checks if you type that it will search for disk management program. Quite neat
There's a 5th reason. If you have a USB hdd plugged into a desktop on a home network and that USB drive is shared on the network and if let's say a laptop on the same network has that USB hdd "mapped as a network drive" as in it's assigned a drive letter but it's being accessed through the network, then if you physically remove the USB drive from the desktop and plug it directly into the laptop, that will confuse the bejeezus out of windows. Often the drive will not be accessible until the mapped network drive is "disconnected" and then the USB drive will need unplugged and then plugged back in. Sometimes you will need to disconnect the mapped network drive and then restart the PC before it will accept the USB drive plugged directly into it.
Thank you so much!!! Just what i was looking for this fixed my corrupted USB which kept crashing my computer when i tried to Access it. After watching many videos all about diskpart and failing, i finally found something helpful, thank you. Keep up the good work👍!
Thanks, ThioJoe, You just solved a major headache for me, after weeks of searches and attempts I came across your video and what I had been looking for, What it is I bought a new flash drive and I did add on some information then when I went to use it all I got was the sound like you said but no reaction from the drive, I did as you said and one of your recommendations did the trick, it was not about the cost of the new flash drive but not being able to use it within such a short time span after purchasing it, Thanks for the great information.
Useful. I noticed you were rather casual with your formatting recommendations, but there are are some simple, important considerations. If you want a volume greater than 32 GB you pretty much have to use NTFS. Same if you want to store a file larger than 4GB. The error message you get when you try to copy a file bigger than 4GB to a FAT32 USB drive is confusing - it would have you believe there is no room on the drive, even if you know it has plenty of space.
@@armelind Ironically exFat isn't supported on all versions of Linux (at least not the last time I checked) but NTFS is pretty much universally recognized. In theory exFat would be better for sensitive documents since NTFS records some text information into the file system which doesn't always get deleted by cleaners. SSDs also don't delete data the same way hard drives do since they try to spread wear and tear around but there are usually methods to permanently delete a file (I forget the technical term they use) which are actually more secure than HDDs (HDDs leave a magnetic record whereas with an SSD, if you use the correct method, the data is completely erased).
There is a fifth problem I kept encountering until I figured out what was causing it. I plug in a USB stick, and it does not even come up in Disk Manager. When I go to Device Manager > USB Controllers, I find that one of the USB Storage Device Icons had a small grey exclamation mark on it. I right click on it, click "Enable" and the USB drive pops up straight away. There are a few reasons this can happen, but one of them is when you insert and then remove a USB stick too quickly. As it turned out, the cause of my problem was a worn out USB socket - when I plug in the drive, it briefly connects and then when I let go of the stick, it would disconnect, and that was disabling the USB port. I replaced the USB socket panel, and the problem stopped happening.
I have had that happen on my Mac too, so it's not just Windows computers, although I have always been able to fix the problem either by running disk utilities, or Disk Drill.
Me; *Inserts usb* Windows: Windows pretended not to notice Windows: Windows is loafing around Windows: Windows defeyed orders Windows: Windows fell asleep
I find the most common cause is simply an insecure connection. Not plugged in all the way or being a bit cockeyed. Unplugging the drive and plugging it back in usually fixes it.
I've got a pair of older WD USB hard drives that I got totally sick of connecting to the computer anymore b/c they change the boot order. Windows tries to boot from the WSB USB hard drive... Windows gets confused, runs System Repair, but it doesn't know what's going on and can't solve the problem. When it first happened it took me a while to figure it out, but you need to go into the BIOS and put the (internal) hard drive with Windows on it to the top of the boot order again. But, if I keep the WD USB hard drive connected to the computer it'll just do it again... Any idea of how to resolve this issue? Is this something with the WD USB hard drive?
I have a problem sometimes on Android where a disk gets corrupted. This is less likely to occur if sudden, forced shutdowns are avoided.. (Avoid forcing a shutdown by holding in the power button until the device shuts down.) Avoid letting the device battery run down so that it goes into a state of shutdown. For extra piece of mind unmount the SD card from settings. The reboot or shutdown the device.
I have a similar recurring issue, where USB drives that worked before seem to disconnect themselves. Reconnecting does nothing. I figured out that disabling and re-enabling the USB 3.0 Root Hub device in Device Manager fixes the issue - at least temporarily (a few days to a few weeks).
Hi ThioJoe! I really love your vids it's so highly informative. I have a humble suggestion; will you make a video regarding on the "refresh" and what's all behind it? when we right click and hit refresh it's sometimes fix problems, it also became an innate nature for a normal person to just hit refresh whenever the pc starts or just on random times. thanks!
Sometimes I had partitions created by Linux or Mac that Windows Disk Management couldn't delete. To fix that I open "diskpart" do "list disk" to identify the drive, "select drive x" where x is the ID I found with list disk and then "clean" which will remove all partitions and all data. After that I can create a new volume in Disk Management.
also, there was a case with my USB drive, where Windows played the device plug in sound, but the device itself was not working properly basically, Windows recognized the microcontroller, but the microcontroller was not able to communicate with the NAND (where the actual data is) so Windows thought I plugged in a 0MB flash drive :D and don't worry, I didn't have anything important on that flash drive, and had good backups :)
Thank you Theo Joe for making this video it helped me a lot I had tried to upload a new operating system onto my drive D and somehow screwed it up an lossed access to the drive your tutorial here help me fix that and now the driver's back so thank you so much.
guys, the fix that worked for me was going to disk manager and pressing on (for me drive one on the bottom) that was the only place it was, then i assigned a letter and it worked!
Something happened to my pendrive and it stopped working. I can hear the sound the computer makes when you plug in a drive to the USB port, but it does not show up in the partition manager in any of my computers. I can’t Imagine why suddenly it stopped working
Thank you. One of your more useful videos for me anyways. I feel like gathering up all my old usb's and seeing what I can do. I have a few old external HD's too that i think I might be able to get going again. thanks.
I didn't know about the "Initialize disk" option. I used to launch MiniTool Partition manager to format those ones. Good to know that Windows can format those external drives as well.
Forget that, how do you stop the right mouse button randomly clicking itself? I think I've inadvertently turned on some feature or other that make is do that, but I don't know how I did it. I can't find it anywhere in my mouse options.
Hey ThioJoe I love your videos I have a question do you think you can make a video about what is on your computer like what kind of apps you use and I have 1 more question what kind of computer do you use?
I watched greg salazar's latest video where he tried to fix a viewer's pc. The SSD he dealt with was detected but couldn't be initialized. (In the end diagnosed as dead) How would you have dealt with it? Thanks
I have one I've seen many times, being in corporate IT for 25 years: Windows assigns the drive a drive letter the same as a network mapped drive. Let's say Windows gets a new drive and assigns it the "H" drive letter. Well, in many corporate environments. H: is assigned to the user's home drive. Suddenly, the drive isn't showing up, and the user has no idea what's going on. Going into drive manager and changing the drive assignment manually will clear it up. I've seen this too many times to count.
Oh man, I had this exact same problem a few months ago when I was messing with a Fedora install on my usb drive. Afterwards I set it back to "factory default" and it stopped appearing in Windows Explorer... Disk Manager was throwing errors on it, and it took well over an hour of deleting the partition, recreating, reformating, deleting again, until I finally got it to appear and I could reformat it through Windows Explorer.
I've seen the issue occur if the drive has been assigned a particular drive letter then removed. Another drive is attached and currently has the drive letter assigned to the removed drive. When the removed drive is reconnected, it won't show up since it's assigned drive letter is already in use. If you don't assign a drive letter, but just let it get the default next drive letter, then this isn't an issue. In this case, if the drive is reconnected, it gets a different drive letter since it's first drive letter is now in use.
I have the "No Media" problem, the sound plays, but in my case is a corrupted controller problem, but i never could fix it with a lot of solutions i found on the internet
I've had this happen and could never find a fix either. I tried reinstalling the drivers. This and that. Nothing! Funny thing is it would recognize some flash drives and a external DVD player, but not external HDD's. I was already gonna replace the internal USB plate, then all of a sudden it picked up a external HDD I own. It was only after the latest windows update at that time the USB slots started working with external HD. Keep in mind I also tried updating the machine manually before it finally worked. Windows being windows I guess.
Do you have a video that covers what to do if you have a USB that will open, shows up, I can navigate to it and open it - see files - but then within a few seconds it automatically closes back down? If I want the files I have to be really fast and right click - copy and go to desktop and right click - paste to get anything off of it! It is a CF card in a USB card reader and it happens with two different readers. I never had any issues with readers or cards until I got a new computer with Windows 11. I think it might be a setting like USB power management or something but I can't seem to find where that setting might be located to turn things on/off. Any suggestions?
thio i saw some people convert their (C DRIVE) File path MBR to GPT.. what happen after we do it ? ? ? if you can pls create a video about that.. Thanks
I thought this would be about USB drives disappearing that were already showing. I keep getting write errors randomly and find the drive I'm using just disappeared. Have to unplug and re-plug the USB connection to get it back.
Thx big dawg I had a yellow clear 128gb USB stick making sound but never came up on my desktop but on my laptop running same windows 10 pro 22h2 on both machines but the dam desktop wouldn't see it so you fixed it drive letter is now Y: and now I'm good. Thx brother
Over a week I transferred video files to a 6TB WD Red cmr drive, " my off site backup for videos and photos", by USB using a Mediasonic Probox "toaster" type External Hard Drive Docking Station. Adding files to the videos folder add deleting a few over several sessions. When the drive was about 85% full one morning I went to open the Videos folder, to finish updating my backup but a windows dialog box said it could not open it because no path to it existed, or something to that effect. I clicked the file a second time, got the same message, then the folder with almost 4Tb of files disappeared before my eyes, leaving the folder with over 500 Gb of photo files intact. The drive still shows 4.31 Tb of space used but only the photo files are accessible. Upon buying a new 8 Tb drive, the technician said a toaster style external dock is unreliable with hard drives over 4 Tb and could of corrupted the data causing the situation. So I should format it and hope to see a full 6 Tb or actually 5.40somthing available if it is not the drive its self that is corrupted. Any suggestions before I format? P.s. the files are not hidden or in the recycle bin, and Crystal Disk Info tells me that my WD red is just fine.
I've had yet another issue where Windows persisted in assigning a drive letter that was already in use by a network drive. Can also be solved using Disk Management.
Network probably set up as relative drive - so next incremental, rather than a forced share (is that dollar dollar signs I forget the order of parameters)
Hi, I have situation that you have not described. What to do with DISK 8 on your video? USB inserted, pc gave sound, but in disk management stay description like for DISK8 in your video? thank you.
What about if it's a flash stick and shows up as (letter) MEMORY BAR and does indeed tell you how much is used and free but when you try to access it won't open and is unaccessable?
I am encountering issues when i open my drive bay. Sometimes windows easily reads the drives but now its having hard time reading them and it is being disconnected on its own as well from time to time. How can i fix this? Thanks.
That exactly the video I was hoping for but I have a usb that has a similar problem but the cache is that, when I connect the usb I plays the sound of the removable media but in the device manager it says "no media" No unlocated, no drive letter problem just no media
My drive isn't even getting recognised and Windows isn't playing the sound. My sister got a USB drive from her collage about a year ago and didn't use it at all. She's recently given it to me, and it doesn't work, doesn't make the sound, Windows has no clue. I assume this is just that it's broken, given that my phone didn't recognise it either, but could it be something else?
If the drive has a partition that Windows Disk Management doesn't recognize and can't remove, it can still be removed using Windows command line. Use diskpart, select the drive, then issue the "clean" command. This will completely wipe the drive and it will show up in Disk Management as Not Initialized. Be careful doing it this way that you select the correct disk.
How do I reconnect a USB device that I previously ejected, without getting off my FAT32 AZZ. I came across a method once on youtube (might have been your channel even) but it didnt work.
Hi Joe, this is a great video on for USB thumb drives. I have a question and problem with my Windows 11 computer. I have a couple of large 1TB and a 2TB thumb drives that I would like to have multiple partitions on. I tried AIMEI partition manager and Windows but even though I can create multiple partitions Windows will not let me see them. I understand that Windows did not support multiple USB drive partitions until Windows 10, but i am running Windows 11. I can't seem to find out if Windows 11 supports USB multi-partition drives or if that upgrade only applied to Windows 10. If you know how to fix this problem on Windows 11 i would really like to know, Thanks ---Ron
My new drive was ok for a while on my new computer. Suddenly it wasn't showing up. It's not showing up in disk management. I think the windows updates I started to get a lot of, caused my thumb drive to not show up. It's going on four months now. I'd like to load more info on to it. I periodically try to figure this out. You'd figure this wouldn't happen on this time line of computer technology. They let us hassle with all the "bugs". It saves them a lot of $$.
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NOTE: Most thumb drives these days are probably best formatted as "exFAT", because FAT32 only supported up to 4GB file sizes. UNLESS you want absolutely maximum compatibility on really old computers (~2010 and earlier OS's like Mac OSX 10.6 or Windows XP). In this demo it didn't offer me exFAT as an option because the drive was too small.
So shout out to my absolutely ancient 247 MB thumb drive, still going strong after like 15 years.
To be clear, Mac OS X Snow Leopard introduced exFAT support in one of the updates. So most likely Leopard and earlier (unless you installed Snow Leopard when it came out and never updated, or installed fresh from the install CD)
you must first try if it isn't usb slot. try to plug in it into another pc
One thing that is stupid is that some Devices like printers STILL only supports FAT32 for printing or scanning documents from/to a flash drive or portable HD.
Its a good thing that I dont keep files on my flash drives long term so reformatting them for use with a printer isn't too much of a problem for me (especially because scanning over WIFI is slowe than scanning to my USB drive)
Ahh, didn't read this until I was ready to hit post. I just wrote a comment about this. I will just add if you ever tried to add a movie to a completely empty drive and it says that there isn't enough room this is why.
I have an 8GB drive that copies with 2MB/s and I think it will die soon. You seem to have a great one!
Me : *Plugs in a usb*
Windows : *Im gonna pretend I didnt detect that.*
The bigger question is, where did you find a 250MB drive at? You can also see the drives that have been plugged in through device manager.
I have a 256MB drive
Its prob an old drive
@@terasestHammasratas The epic of Gilgamesh was likely written in one of those
250mb is commong usb drive... i got from auction website 50mb one on some computers it was not working idk why
Partitioning
I've had that happen a lot. But what makes it work is I just close and re-open, or click on the refresh icon. And it does work most of the time.
So far, the refresh button seems to solve most of the Windows problems
It doesn't work for me. I need to reconnect and connect multiple times to solve it
ThioJoe doesn't agree Terms and Conditions with Windows.
Windows agrees with him.
Thank You for all of your videos that you did. I am enjoying all of them
I've been searching for a resolution to this issue i've had for a few days with no clear idea - most places were attempting to get me to download programs ect, this was so simple and straightforward thank you!
Thanks, Joe. And nice update to old XP wallpaper.
WOW! This just validated the way I have gone about all of this to get the thumb drive recognized. Thanks.
I know this but I still watched this all the way through cause you're the man
I'm doing exactly that right now
1:38 - To get to Disk Management you could also right click the Start button then click 'Disk Management'.
Another way is to type fdisk in the seach bar and it will also show up. fdisk was the name of the old disk partition software for DOS, and Windows 10 checks if you type that it will search for disk management program. Quite neat
There's a 5th reason. If you have a USB hdd plugged into a desktop on a home network and that USB drive is shared on the network and if let's say a laptop on the same network has that USB hdd "mapped as a network drive" as in it's assigned a drive letter but it's being accessed through the network, then if you physically remove the USB drive from the desktop and plug it directly into the laptop, that will confuse the bejeezus out of windows. Often the drive will not be accessible until the mapped network drive is "disconnected" and then the USB drive will need unplugged and then plugged back in. Sometimes you will need to disconnect the mapped network drive and then restart the PC before it will accept the USB drive plugged directly into it.
Oddly enough, I had the same problem a couple of times after my penultimate Linux Mint 19.1 update. Since updated to 19.2. So far, no problems.
Thank you so much!!! Just what i was looking for this fixed my corrupted USB which kept crashing my computer when i tried to Access it. After watching many videos all about diskpart and failing, i finally found something helpful, thank you. Keep up the good work👍!
Thanks, ThioJoe, You just solved a major headache for me, after weeks of searches and attempts I came across your video and what I had been looking for, What it is I bought a new flash drive and I did add on some information then when I went to use it all I got was the sound like you said but no reaction from the drive, I did as you said and one of your recommendations did the trick, it was not about the cost of the new flash drive but not being able to use it within such a short time span after purchasing it, Thanks for the great information.
Useful. I noticed you were rather casual with your formatting recommendations, but there are are some simple, important considerations. If you want a volume greater than 32 GB you pretty much have to use NTFS. Same if you want to store a file larger than 4GB. The error message you get when you try to copy a file bigger than 4GB to a FAT32 USB drive is confusing - it would have you believe there is no room on the drive, even if you know it has plenty of space.
Yes many hours of cussing figuring this one out. exfat should do well too if it is an option.
@@armelind Ironically exFat isn't supported on all versions of Linux (at least not the last time I checked) but NTFS is pretty much universally recognized. In theory exFat would be better for sensitive documents since NTFS records some text information into the file system which doesn't always get deleted by cleaners. SSDs also don't delete data the same way hard drives do since they try to spread wear and tear around but there are usually methods to permanently delete a file (I forget the technical term they use) which are actually more secure than HDDs (HDDs leave a magnetic record whereas with an SSD, if you use the correct method, the data is completely erased).
Dude you are my #1 digital savior! You do great work! Thank you!
This channel explains things soo clearly that i feel I don't need to watch any other tech channels to figure out about the topic told here 😁😁
There is a fifth problem I kept encountering until I figured out what was causing it.
I plug in a USB stick, and it does not even come up in Disk Manager. When I go to Device Manager > USB Controllers, I find that one of the USB Storage Device Icons had a small grey exclamation mark on it. I right click on it, click "Enable" and the USB drive pops up straight away. There are a few reasons this can happen, but one of them is when you insert and then remove a USB stick too quickly. As it turned out, the cause of my problem was a worn out USB socket - when I plug in the drive, it briefly connects and then when I let go of the stick, it would disconnect, and that was disabling the USB port. I replaced the USB socket panel, and the problem stopped happening.
I have had that happen on my Mac too, so it's not just Windows computers, although I have always been able to fix the problem either by running disk utilities, or Disk Drill.
Me; *Inserts usb*
Windows: Windows pretended not to notice
Windows: Windows is loafing around
Windows: Windows defeyed orders
Windows: Windows fell asleep
AAAAHHHH, I needed this video but I can't find my thumbstick!!!! the frustration is off limits!!!
cool video tho
I find the most common cause is simply an insecure connection. Not plugged in all the way or being a bit cockeyed. Unplugging the drive and plugging it back in usually fixes it.
Did you try turning it on and off ?
I've got a pair of older WD USB hard drives that I got totally sick of connecting to the computer anymore b/c they change the boot order. Windows tries to boot from the WSB USB hard drive... Windows gets confused, runs System Repair, but it doesn't know what's going on and can't solve the problem. When it first happened it took me a while to figure it out, but you need to go into the BIOS and put the (internal) hard drive with Windows on it to the top of the boot order again. But, if I keep the WD USB hard drive connected to the computer it'll just do it again... Any idea of how to resolve this issue? Is this something with the WD USB hard drive?
I have a problem sometimes on Android where a disk gets corrupted. This is less likely to occur if sudden, forced shutdowns are avoided.. (Avoid forcing a shutdown by holding in the power button until the device shuts down.) Avoid letting the device battery run down so that it goes into a state of shutdown. For extra piece of mind unmount the SD card from settings. The reboot or shutdown the device.
I have a similar recurring issue, where USB drives that worked before seem to disconnect themselves. Reconnecting does nothing.
I figured out that disabling and re-enabling the USB 3.0 Root Hub device in Device Manager fixes the issue - at least temporarily (a few days to a few weeks).
What's the cause? Bad driver?
Hi ThioJoe! I really love your vids it's so highly informative. I have a humble suggestion; will you make a video regarding on the "refresh" and what's all behind it? when we right click and hit refresh it's sometimes fix problems, it also became an innate nature for a normal person to just hit refresh whenever the pc starts or just on random times. thanks!
Sometimes I had partitions created by Linux or Mac that Windows Disk Management couldn't delete. To fix that I open "diskpart" do "list disk" to identify the drive, "select drive x" where x is the ID I found with list disk and then "clean" which will remove all partitions and all data. After that I can create a new volume in Disk Management.
also, there was a case with my USB drive, where Windows played the device plug in sound, but the device itself was not working properly
basically, Windows recognized the microcontroller, but the microcontroller was not able to communicate with the NAND (where the actual data is)
so Windows thought I plugged in a 0MB flash drive :D
and don't worry, I didn't have anything important on that flash drive, and had good backups :)
Smarter everyday, thanks. 😁👍.
Thank you Theo Joe for making this video it helped me a lot I had tried to upload a new operating system onto my drive D and somehow screwed it up an lossed access to the drive your tutorial here help me fix that and now the driver's back so thank you so much.
guys, the fix that worked for me was going to disk manager and pressing on (for me drive one on the bottom) that was the only place it was, then i assigned a letter and it worked!
Great troubleshooting video!
Thanks!
Thanks a lot Joe. Almost got rid of an external hard drive 👍
Something happened to my pendrive and it stopped working. I can hear the sound the computer makes when you plug in a drive to the USB port, but it does not show up in the partition manager in any of my computers. I can’t Imagine why suddenly it stopped working
Thank you. One of your more useful videos for me anyways. I feel like gathering up all my old usb's and seeing what I can do. I have a few old external HD's too that i think I might be able to get going again. thanks.
I didn't know about the "Initialize disk" option. I used to launch MiniTool Partition manager to format those ones. Good to know that Windows can format those external drives as well.
Great info. Thanks.
You deserve 1 billion likes
Never has this issue(s) but is a keeper for the future👍
Well thank you for posting a fix on some problem i had 3 weeks ago,my school files are saved because of this :)
this was super helpful, thank you!
Forget that, how do you stop the right mouse button randomly clicking itself? I think I've inadvertently turned on some feature or other that make is do that, but I don't know how I did it. I can't find it anywhere in my mouse options.
Hey ThioJoe I love your videos I have a question do you think you can make a video about what is on your computer like what kind of apps you use and I have 1 more question what kind of computer do you use?
Good info. Thanks.
1:22 why did I think my PC connected something lmao even though you said you were going to plug something in. I'm dumb.
I watched greg salazar's latest video where he tried to fix a viewer's pc. The SSD he dealt with was detected but couldn't be initialized. (In the end diagnosed as dead)
How would you have dealt with it?
Thanks
Its dead, It happens
Great stuff dude.
What do we do if the disk is showing up as a removable like your Disk 7 and Disk 8, with no volumes to interact with?
#Microsoft needs to hire you. I swear. You are like Microsoft’s biggest cheerleader on TH-cam. ❤️👍🏼
For sure yes
I have one I've seen many times, being in corporate IT for 25 years: Windows assigns the drive a drive letter the same as a network mapped drive. Let's say Windows gets a new drive and assigns it the "H" drive letter. Well, in many corporate environments. H: is assigned to the user's home drive. Suddenly, the drive isn't showing up, and the user has no idea what's going on. Going into drive manager and changing the drive assignment manually will clear it up. I've seen this too many times to count.
Oh man, I had this exact same problem a few months ago when I was messing with a Fedora install on my usb drive. Afterwards I set it back to "factory default" and it stopped appearing in Windows Explorer... Disk Manager was throwing errors on it, and it took well over an hour of deleting the partition, recreating, reformating, deleting again, until I finally got it to appear and I could reformat it through Windows Explorer.
Was very useful thankyou
The amount of times I thought my pc was disconnecting and connecting my devices while watching this video...
i follow your lead step by step and its great ,,thank you thank you !!!!
Turned out my external hard drive was just offline lmao. Thanks for the video cause for sure i was getting frustrated .
Disk Manager can also be reached by right clicking the Start button and selecting Disk Management.
I've seen the issue occur if the drive has been assigned a particular drive letter then removed. Another drive is attached and currently has the drive letter assigned to the removed drive. When the removed drive is reconnected, it won't show up since it's assigned drive letter is already in use. If you don't assign a drive letter, but just let it get the default next drive letter, then this isn't an issue. In this case, if the drive is reconnected, it gets a different drive letter since it's first drive letter is now in use.
I literally had this problem with my sd-card slot and I saw this video after I fixed it.
I have the "No Media" problem, the sound plays, but in my case is a corrupted controller problem, but i never could fix it with a lot of solutions i found on the internet
I've had this happen and could never find a fix either. I tried reinstalling the drivers. This and that. Nothing! Funny thing is it would recognize some flash drives and a external DVD player, but not external HDD's.
I was already gonna replace the internal USB plate, then all of a sudden it picked up a external HDD I own. It was only after the latest windows update at that time the USB slots started working with external HD. Keep in mind I also tried updating the machine manually before it finally worked. Windows being windows I guess.
the drive letter unassignement can occur if you don't safely eject the USB
so, always safely eject your USB drives
thanks man, first solution works for me
But what do you do when you plug in the usb and it explodes...?
This will help me lot 💕👌
Great Video! 🙂
Don't forget you can install a EXT4 driver in Windows to access drives created in this format.
Now i know what i will have to do if this ever happen with my usb drives
Do you have a video that covers what to do if you have a USB that will open, shows up, I can navigate to it and open it - see files - but then within a few seconds it automatically closes back down? If I want the files I have to be really fast and right click - copy and go to desktop and right click - paste to get anything off of it! It is a CF card in a USB card reader and it happens with two different readers. I never had any issues with readers or cards until I got a new computer with Windows 11. I think it might be a setting like USB power management or something but I can't seem to find where that setting might be located to turn things on/off. Any suggestions?
You make such cool videos even though i use a mac
Amazing video
Thanks so much it does work cause my other half was unallocated
It really helps thanks alot
thio i saw some people convert their (C DRIVE) File path MBR to GPT.. what happen after we do it ? ? ? if you can pls create a video about that.. Thanks
I thought this would be about USB drives disappearing that were already showing. I keep getting write errors randomly and find the drive I'm using just disappeared. Have to unplug and re-plug the USB connection to get it back.
Thx big dawg I had a yellow clear 128gb USB stick making sound but never came up on my desktop but on my laptop running same windows 10 pro 22h2 on both machines but the dam desktop wouldn't see it so you fixed it drive letter is now Y: and now I'm good. Thx brother
Fixed! Thanks man
Over a week I transferred video files to a 6TB WD Red cmr drive, " my off site backup for videos and photos", by USB using a Mediasonic Probox "toaster" type External Hard Drive Docking Station. Adding files to the videos folder add deleting a few over several sessions. When the drive was about 85% full one morning I went to open the Videos folder, to finish updating my backup but a windows dialog box said it could not open it because no path to it existed, or something to that effect. I clicked the file a second time, got the same message, then the folder with almost 4Tb of files disappeared before my eyes, leaving the folder with over 500 Gb of photo files intact. The drive still shows 4.31 Tb of space used but only the photo files are accessible. Upon buying a new 8 Tb drive, the technician said a toaster style external dock is unreliable with hard drives over 4 Tb and could of corrupted the data causing the situation. So I should format it and hope to see a full 6 Tb or actually 5.40somthing available if it is not the drive its self that is corrupted.
Any suggestions before I format?
P.s. the files are not hidden or in the recycle bin, and Crystal Disk Info tells me that my WD red is just fine.
I've had yet another issue where Windows persisted in assigning a drive letter that was already in use by a network drive. Can also be solved using Disk Management.
Network probably set up as relative drive - so next incremental, rather than a forced share (is that dollar dollar signs I forget the order of parameters)
Hi, I have situation that you have not described. What to do with DISK 8 on your video? USB inserted, pc gave sound, but in disk management stay description like for DISK8 in your video? thank you.
What about if it's a flash stick and shows up as (letter) MEMORY BAR and does indeed tell you how much is used and free but when you try to access it won't open and is unaccessable?
thanks for this,
problem #2 did the gob that is very good
helped a lot 👌👌
I am encountering issues when i open my drive bay. Sometimes windows easily reads the drives but now its having hard time reading them and it is being disconnected on its own as well from time to time. How can i fix this? Thanks.
Hey I had a thumb drive and disk manager was not loading and as I plugged it out disk manager loaded up
That exactly the video I was hoping for but I have a usb that has a similar problem but the cache is that, when I connect the usb I plays the sound of the removable media but in the device manager it says "no media"
No unlocated, no drive letter problem just no media
You can also hide and restrict drives in the registry / group policy which malware can implement
The disconnect sound stresses me out right away when I hear it in this video hahaha
My drive isn't even getting recognised and Windows isn't playing the sound.
My sister got a USB drive from her collage about a year ago and didn't use it at all.
She's recently given it to me, and it doesn't work, doesn't make the sound, Windows has no clue.
I assume this is just that it's broken, given that my phone didn't recognise it either, but could it be something else?
If the drive has a partition that Windows Disk Management doesn't recognize and can't remove, it can still be removed using Windows command line. Use diskpart, select the drive, then issue the "clean" command. This will completely wipe the drive and it will show up in Disk Management as Not Initialized. Be careful doing it this way that you select the correct disk.
How do I reconnect a USB device that I previously ejected, without getting off my FAT32 AZZ.
I came across a method once on youtube (might have been your channel even) but it didnt work.
Dude you’re a legend
huge thank you
hey joe, i have a external hard disk that cannot get recognise by window after window 11 update. what should i do?
Do you have a good fix for iSCSI drive that disappear and must be disconnected and reconnectedÉ
Do you really leave the Windows sounds on? It's one of the first things I turn off.
They're annoying, but when you're troubleshooting things they can be helpful
Do you have any suggestions for the case where the drive is marked "RAW" and essentially "vanishes" when trying to wipe, delete volume, etc.?
Hi Joe, this is a great video on for USB thumb drives. I have a question and problem with my Windows 11 computer. I have a couple of large 1TB and a 2TB thumb drives that I would like to have multiple partitions on. I tried AIMEI partition manager and Windows but even though I can create multiple partitions Windows will not let me see them. I understand that Windows did not support multiple USB drive partitions until Windows 10, but i am running Windows 11. I can't seem to find out if Windows 11 supports USB multi-partition drives or if that upgrade only applied to Windows 10. If you know how to fix this problem on Windows 11 i would really like to know, Thanks ---Ron
My new drive was ok for a while on my new computer. Suddenly it wasn't showing up. It's not showing up in disk management. I think the windows updates I started to get a lot of, caused my thumb drive to not show up. It's going on four months now. I'd like to load more info on to it. I periodically try to figure this out. You'd figure this wouldn't happen on this time line of computer technology. They let us hassle with all the "bugs". It saves them a lot of $$.
Good information