USB flash drive not working ? What can you do ?
Generally a USB flash drive, memory stick or whatever you call the drive is a very robust way of storing data, they can normally sustain a great deal of abuse and still work, I’ve even had one go through a washing machine cycle after I left it in a shirt pocket, and it still worked after.
Most of the time a problem with a USB drive not working can be attributed to several things.
It’s ended its life expectancy, very rare as generally you can expect a drive to last around ten years, but as there are not too many of this age around its hard to be accurate here, if your USB flash drive is not working as its ended its life expectancy you’ll need to buy another, there is no way around this.
If anyone has a solution to this please let me know and I’ll add it to the page.
Files on the USB flash drive are not working or corrupt, the files are copied, but when you try to access them you get file read errors, this happens when the files are not fully copied, usually caused by improperly removing the USB flash drive.
Files that are corrupt and do not open properly will normally be a different size to it’s working equivalent.
Always make sure it’s removed correctly by clicking on the USB icon on the bottom right of your screen and choosing to remove, you’ll get a system message when it’s ok to remove.
When you plug-in your USB flash drive and it all appears to be working ok, but you can’t find it, this is a common issue with computers that have many drive letters in use, and the USB drive tries to use the same drive letter which is already assigned to another device and it can be seen.
To remedy this right click on MY Computer select Manage, choose Disk Management, now you can see your USB flash drive, right click and select, Change Drive Letter and Paths, now change the drive letter for one that’s not in use, Z is usually a safe choice.
NOTES..
Always make sure you remove the USB flash drive properly as above, never simply just remove it. This is the most common cause of a USB flash drive not working,
USB flash drives can be formatted & partitioned like a normal disk, but when choosing a disk format, unless you have a reason, play it safe and use FAT32, otherwise NTFS can give compatibility issues on other formats and older systems, as well as security issues.
If you find your USB drive to simply be slow checkout the USB on your pc, you might be using USB type 1, which is around 7 times slower than USB 2
Your USB flash drive will work for many years if looked after
Be sure to checkout more of our articles
computer adviser usb flash drive not working article
I’m having problems with my new 2G HP thumb drive. It cannot store pictures and videos. When I copied all the pictures and videos from my Sony Vaio laptop’s hard disk to this thumb drive, it seemed okay. I double-checked if the files were really copied and I even clicked some of the folders containing the pictures. Then after about a week, when I wanted to transfer another batch of multimedia files, lo and behold! All the multimedia files i previously transferred to this thumb drive were gone! I opened the folders and all of them were empty. But the word documents were intact, only the pictures and video files were gone. Is the thumb drive defective?
Do you always remove the drive correctly rather than just pulling it out?
This is a common way to lose files.
Other than that its worth formatting the drive, or even deleting its partition and then formatting in case its format is corrupt.
thanks for your comments
M
Hi there, I have a new Kingston 4 gb flash drive, whenever I try to put a movie in it and try to play it from the drive I always get the message”cannot play the file general error” but the file from where I copied it is not corrupt or whatever. Same as when I tried to put some software installer in it. I have formatted it several times same prob and also I always remove it correctly. thanks.
my flash memory was working before now it is not working giving error( Do you want the configuration now?) so please suggest me what can i do to go through the problem so i can i get my data back as soon as possible thanking you
My problem is the PC will not recognise that I have plugged in the drive. The LED will not come on as well on the drive, but if I move it around in the USB slot then it trys to light up. I have alot of stored files on the drive and would like to remove them, but don’t know how to get into the drive.
Thanks for any help.
I am having this problem too. There is a secure partition on my drive and the software doesn’t seem to recognise it any more. I can access the ‘public’ partition, but not the secure one. It has ALL my work on it and i really need to get it back. Can anyone suggest ANYTHING to help??? I’m really getting desperate!
I have a PNY 16GB, yeah it has most of my work for school and everything on it, I try to put it in and i’m not getting anything, nothing at all to show that the blasted thing is plugged it, I want to remove files and do my school work and yet I can’t F888ing get into the thing!
i have a 4gb flash drive and it new.i copied some few documents in it and saved but after same few days the pictures and some of my reports were gone.please advice me on what to do to get back my documents.
Did you remove it correctly? This is a common symptom of simply pulling it out when it looks as though copying is finished
I have a 32 gig flash drive it is recognized under my computer but not under disk management
it will not open if you double click it it will just keep thinking what do i do
Very odd, its normally the other way around, it can normally be seen under disk management, but not under my computer etc.
Can you format it from my computer?
Hi all-have a 16gb and 8gb mem sticks-both stopped working after i used them on a free to air satelite box. any ideas – cheers
I use one on a freeview box for updates, watching films etc, never had a problem, but as your stating both no longer work it sounds like the sat box is frying them, do they even get recognised at all when connected to your pc.
hey i have a 32gig kingston data traveler G3 flash drive and it doesn’t work at all. At first it did work until i just wanted to rename my flash and when i did it the windows explorer (not responding) window poped up and rebooted. when I wanted to open my flash it says I have to format it and when i do is says unable to format. I looked at my flash’s properties and it shows used space 0bytes and available space 0 bytes. I then went to disk management and there it says it has 31.74Gb Raw and is healthy(Primary partition ) I don’t know what to do and i downloaded almost every software i can find and still no result PLEASE HELP!!!!
(windows system – windows 7 ultimate)
Hi if you cannot format the drive sounds like its locked in some way, does it have a little slider switch on the side at all?
not at all , BUT i realised that when i insert the flash in the port a light flashes( which is normal) ,but it is suppose to go away after a while. The light now remains on as if it keeps trying to read the flash or something :/
My usb memory is not working in any computer. Very important datas is the flash. Any way to get the data. Please advise
Hi i have a usb, that has important files, etc, etc. When i put it into the port it doesnt work unless i move it around and and try to hold it in one place for it to come up on the screen. Im thinking it could be something wrong with the stick part? it cant be the lap top as its new. can u help? can i fix this?
It does sound as though the stick has connection problem, you can test this by plugging another device into the port, generally USB memory sticks cannot be repaired as everything is surface mount, but they are so cheap its not even worth messing around with.
copy your files off by holding it in place as you have and then replace it.
I was working at uni, RMIT, using files off my USB drive to complete an assignment. I was on a MAC but it has windows loaded onto it. I was working on it for about 4 hours then all of a sudden I tried using endnote (referencing program) and it told me that the file could not be found. Then I tried to save my word document and it wouldnt let me use the USB drive as a source as it said it wasn’t loaded however it was showing up. So I saved as onto the university hard drive. When I went to open the USB on my computer it told me that it was not formatted and asked if I wanted to format it.
I changed computers to a windows 7 machine (the other compuyter was prob using a earlier version) and it still was asking me to format it..
Could I have a virus? If not what is going on?
I’m not a computer wizz so this stuff scares me. I will try when I get home to try opening it again on my MAC book pro but what if it asks me to format it again, will I loose everything that is on it? Is there a way to get all my data back?
Hi Lani, i think it will work in your Mac, it sounds as though its been formatted in the Mac using a file format not compatible to your pc. When you format it again ensure you use FAT32 this should work on both computer platforms then.
S
I have a Lexar 64GB usb stick. Recently it stopped working. When I insert it into the computer AutoPlay no longer opens with options which would allow me to open the folders on the stick. I can open Explorer and see it listed there, but when I click on it, it now says that I need to format it before use. I can right click on the Removable drive icon and check Properties to see that the stick still contains files, but I can’t open it. I believe formatting the stick would erase all data on it. Have I lost my files or is there any way to access them?