Here's Why USB Drives Disappear in Windows Sometimes (+ How to Fix)

[@ThioJoe]

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.

[@ckingpro]

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)

[@citronek135]

you must first try if it isn't usb slot. try to plug in it into another pc

[@nekomasteryoutube3232]

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)

[@kattz753]

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.

[@andypaunov8109]

I have an 8GB drive that copies with 2MB/s and I think it will die soon. You seem to have a great one!

[@Guaranteed_Bonk]

Me : *Plugs in a usb* Windows : *Im gonna pretend I didnt detect that.*

[@todd2116]

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.

[@terasestHammasratas]

I have a 256MB drive

[@sourpatchchild1]

Its prob an old drive

[@rolingpingu]

@@terasestHammasratas The epic of Gilgamesh was likely written in one of those

[@propsekgamer]

250mb is commong usb drive... i got from auction website 50mb one on some computers it was not working idk why

[@alarmingly_good]

Partitioning

[@pyp2205]

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.

[@srivatsavm3892]

So far, the refresh button seems to solve most of the Windows problems

[@Vysair]

It doesn't work for me. I need to reconnect and connect multiple times to solve it

[@srivatsavm3892]

ThioJoe doesn't agree Terms and Conditions with Windows. Windows agrees with him.

[@davidanderson4091]

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.

[@BlenderRookie]

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.

[@kevinhawthorne5257]

Thank You for all of your videos that you did. I am enjoying all of them

[@ianl1052]

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.

[@funnboy1036]

hii im first i think?

[@pyp2205]

Yeah I guess you're first.

[@funnboy1036]

@Kernel NT oh boi when i sleap this happen

[@pmccarthy001]

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?

[@desertgecko4549]

Thanks, Joe. And nice update to old XP wallpaper.

[@paum2]

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

[@biplop.bb25]

man i had the same problem but I unpluged and replugged it and it worked #problem solve

[@AizenSosukesama]

Did you try turning it on and off ?

[@masterofyeet4438]

I know this but I still watched this all the way through cause you're the man

[@fromthegamethrone]

I'm doing exactly that right now

[@JoaquinPro64]

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

[@TheOne0816]

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.

[@ivanlimzg]

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

[@highpath4776]

Its dead, It happens

[@jamescole6846]

Good info now do a video on WHY Windows 10 will never let me eject USB drives because they are in use. I have no windows open whatsoever. I have used procexp64 to find any applications that have the drive letter open and there are none. Yet always says can not eject drive in use. I been around since DOS 2.10. And Still have win7 win8.1 and of course many Linux systems. Windows 10 is the only one that does this. 95 percent of the time I just yank them anyways but I hate doing that.

[@Xenunnaki]

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?

[@IHaveBadWiFiBro]

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.

[@leesweets4110]

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.

[@donald-parker]

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]

Yes many hours of cussing figuring this one out. exfat should do well too if it is an option.

[@grn1]

@@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).

[@AshenDemon]

Heeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyy, You're still using Windows 11. That surprising seeing that others are using Windows 11. Well, I guess you don't have to so I'll just ignore it.

[@sunnywayne1719]

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

[@2FrostyforU]

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!

[@OlettaLiano]

Do you really leave the Windows sounds on? It's one of the first things I turn off.

[@StopRemindingMeOfThoseDays]

They're annoying, but when you're troubleshooting things they can be helpful

[@LuckyAndStorm]

But what do you do when you plug in the usb and it explodes...?

[@PWingert1966]

Do you have a good fix for iSCSI drive that disappear and must be disconnected and reconnectedÉ

[@swapnil72]

Dear TJ till date I was thinking that I am the only freak who used a lots and lots of storage but look at your storage drives! Wtf!??

[@anttiruuskanen7126]

None of those reasons are true. It just plain doesn't fuckíng work no matter what i do...

[@herschel1969]

Bro please make a video on Why Windows Update Cleanup disappear in windows + How to fix i have 9 GB of waste

[@geraldmcmullon2465]

There are a few possible reasons this might be: - Windows is crap and been in user beta since 1983 ...

[@lfraz]

sheesh he has 12 (i think) terabytes when my laptop has only 1tb and my pc only 500gb

[@daryllarsen8858]

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.

[@theBotNinja]

Hey I had a thumb drive and disk manager was not loading and as I plugged it out disk manager loaded up

[@vortexvisionmp3]

This is the same thing that happened to me and it didn’t assign a drive letter after installing a new ssd

[@CoolDudeClem]

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.

[@nathankora]

He's using a 256Mb drive, where did he get that from?

[@gbangyt-codmobile7037]

This Is happening to my pc's hdd Sometimes it gets recognized and sometimes not.

[@johnrinker8123]

Why do I have to keep adding a Drive letter to the same USB flash drive?

[@dangingerich2559]

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.

[@World_of_OSes]

1:38 - To get to Disk Management you could also right click the Start button then click 'Disk Management'.

[@SIeipner]

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

[@spedracer55]

meanwhile me with whole folders of stuff dissapearing

[@aeSain]

3:01 at this part when i click change drive letters , it says ERROR . can you help me with that because i tried everything and i think my usb is now broken like COMPLETELY BROKEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! .

[@andreasplosky8516]

I love how humongously bad the acting of that guy is 0:04.

[@pathtoredemption6643]

Smarter everyday, thanks. 😁👍.

[@Sollace]

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.

[@Blue694]

Now i know what i will have to do if this ever happen with my usb drives

[@Uniblab8]

WOW! This just validated the way I have gone about all of this to get the thumb drive recognized. Thanks.

[@frankschafer1505]

My guess before watching: Microsoft still hasn't figured out how the USB protocol works in 2021.

[@kensmith5694]

Embrace Extend Exterminate has not passed "Embrace" yet.

[@chattin1]

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).

[@louistournas120]

What's the cause? Bad driver?

[@Kris_M]

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.

[@highpath4776]

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)

[@chlorobyte_projects]

Imagine having issues with connecting things to your PC. Can't be me. Yes I use Linux why'd you ask?

[@VitalVampyr]

Last year I was unable to set up a Linux PC because the most recent stable release of Debian didn't have drivers for the years old motherboard's network interface. Had to get a USB adapter so it could connect to the Internet and install backport drivers. I could imagine having the same problem with Windows, but I've never experienced it.

[@chlorobyte_projects]

@@VitalVampyr The "most recent" version of Debian uses software from basically the Ice Age. To be perfectly sure you're getting the latest software, you'll want to go with an Arch based distro, but Ubuntu is also more up to date than Debian Stable.

[@VitalVampyr]

@@chlorobyte_projects I'd default to Ubuntu if setting up a general use Linux PC, but that PC was going to be a file server running OpenMediaVault (which is basically just Debian with a web UI). Also technically all software is from the Ice Age as that refers to when the Earth has any permanent ice sheets. Ice Ages are divided into glacials (when the extent of the ice increases, what is often colloquially called an ice age) and interglacials (when the extent of the ice decreases).

[@VitalVampyr]

@Catharsis Why do so many people think that someone saying: "the premise of that joke is flawed" is the same as them not realizing that it is a joke?

[@yabro9377]

i literally had this problem yesterday

[@AnywaysTech]

I see the high res xp background

[@xozeintk8093]

This will help me lot 💕👌

[@minecraftbasics4043]

Can u make how to fix pendrive no media

[@markusTegelane]

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 :)

[@ChariTT]

You deserve 1 billion likes

[@markusTegelane]

the drive letter unassignement can occur if you don't safely eject the USB so, always safely eject your USB drives

[@leesweets4110]

6:05 So... if I plug in an unformatted USB windows will not ask me to format it. But if I pop in a Linux one, Windows will?! Thats kind of deliberately shady anti-competitive.

[@DoingEvil01]

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.

[@mineland8220]

I have the exact inverse of this problem. I have no drives plugged in and my pc puts on like 4 ghost drives in that cant be accesed.

[@gentuxable]

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.

[@killertruth186]

Do you know how to fix windows recognize USB drive as a DVD drive?

[@abrock6215]

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.

[@MailsonWei]

hey joe, i have a external hard disk that cannot get recognise by window after window 11 update. what should i do?

[@nicholashoi3155]

Yeah talk about Windows Security falls apart when the driver for Razer devices starts installing lmao

[@ianl1052]

More to the point. Where did my USB disappear to last year? I've looked all over my house numerous times and I can't find it. 😉😂😂

[@pokemonanimes6822]

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

[@FocusEdCamera]

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?

[@Slender-the-Blender]

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?

[@UNIX32]

This happened to me when I plugged in a USB floppy drive.

[@freezinfire]

AAAAHHHH, I needed this video but I can't find my thumbstick!!!! the frustration is off limits!!! cool video tho

[@MrSyms69]

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.

[@naeem8434]

Amazing video

[@raistlinmajere3194]

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.

[@yuvrajkukreja9727]

👍👍

[@flicka25]

Wow do you know how many drives I have discarded because of that....I always assume they are corrupted lol

[@anasdabbar]

there's one more actually, once I plugged a drive and it was offline, I had to bring it online from disk manager

[@Glenrsi]

I have thrown away two external hard drives that never showed up on Windows File Explorer. But they used to so maybe it was another fault.

[@PolizeiPaul]

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?

[@quadinaje4376]

omg thank you

[@mousaey]

Years ago I threw out a perfectly fine usb stick because I didn't know better.

[@tastycodlover4082]

another way why the usb might not work properly in the computer is if it’s old and is just slow and needs time to connect again

[@x1625]

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.

[@jinchoung]

actually nevermind USB drives... can you do a segment on why USB DEVICES IN GENERAL aren't always properly recognized? i've found USB to be pretty fucking unreliable with security dongles and web cams and microphones dropping in and out randomly. like at the end of this video, you say that you yourself sometimes hear devices plugging or unplugging even though you didn't do anything.... WHY DOES THAT HAPPEN?! i fucking HATE that that you can't just absolutely rely on a fucking PLUG ffs....

[@GregGreen-e8l]

My two external file savers SINCE the "Update" on my new computer just went to "FORMAT TO USE" and lose all files. Both these drives worked on the computer before FOR MONTHS. What's your advice on this nightmare?? Thank you. -G

[@eassgermany4267]

@ThioJoe how to fix USB Drive not recognized by Windows and it shows NoMedia in Disk Management? With some software tool it shows "Virtual Drive". Maybe you can help and make a video how to fix such problem? Thank you in advance.

[@frenchcreekvalley]

I have xp and I never even got off the ground on this. Entering "disk manager" at the start menu simply gets me a search files containing "disk manager".

[@donkenzy9964]

My HP spectre x360 convertible USB port recently stop responding completely. when I plug any USB device, including flash,phones and external hard drive, nothing happens at All. I have check for physical damage to the USB port, but the USB port seems ok, and The battery health is good as well, I have tried several advance troubleshooting, including updating my driver's via system update and device Manager, and others,but The problem continue.

[@slimyklerburt9590]

This is still not as annoying when I plug my live linux usb and windows prompts me to format it

[@cnlicnli]

*Thumb Drive NOT Disconnecting:* My problem is my thumb drive or external HD won’t disconnect from my PC; it says it’s still being used by another program even after I’ve closed all the programs. Any solutions?

[@caseymcgee-jm7gi]

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

[@GeetaDeka]

Hi

[@gam9961]

If I format one partion and I want to extend other partion, I can not do it, I got an error message.

[@StopRemindingMeOfThoseDays]

Try using Mini Tool Partition Wizard instead of the built-in disk manager. It works for me.

[@EvanMMD3939]

i mean, my problem is when i plug my sandisc clip jam mp3 player into my laptop, it starts charging but it doesnt show up on the file explorer or anything. the laptop doesnt even make a sound when i plug it in. ordinary usb drives work normally and neither of the usb slots are broken, so idk whats going on there.

[@rubyskynet7194]

:P

[@themusesquad8554]

I never get why Microsoft dont add file support for other non windows file systems