How Do I Find A Thumb Drive That Is Not Registering A Pop Up Window On My Laptop

(Photo: Nor Gal/Shutterstock)

Backing up your data is important, and while storing data on the cloud has get 2d nature to most, at that place'south still nothing like having everything saved on a concrete device.

External drives are simple: you lot plug them in, they appear on your computer, and you can drag files right on over. Just if your drive isn't appearing when y'all plug it in, you might have a problem. Here are a few troubleshooting steps you can have to remedy the situation.

Make Sure It's Plugged In and Powered On

Western Digital My Book

I know, I know, but hear me out: just because you plugged the drive into your computer doesn't mean information technology's necessarily receiving the power it needs. While some drives tin can depict enough power from your computer'southward USB port, others—especially larger drives not intended to be portable, similar the Western Digital My Book—may crave wall ability to spin up.

If your drive came with an Air-conditioning power adapter but you haven't plugged it in, try hooking information technology upwardly (and pressing the power push button, if there is ane). If it came with ii USB plugs, make sure they'reboth plugged into your PC. With whatsoever luck, your drive will appear normally in one case information technology gets the juice it needs.

Try Another USB Port (or Another PC)

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If the drive yet isn't working, unplug it and try a unlike USB port. It'southward possible the port in question is failing, or just beingness finicky with your specific drive. If it's plugged into a USB 3.0 port, try a USB 2.0 port. If it's plugged into a USB hub, effort plugging it direct into the PC instead. You might also try it in some other computer.

If you're a multi-platform household, I'd specially recommend trying it in a computer that runs another operating system—e.yard., if you can't become the drive showing upward on a Windows PC, try plugging it into a Mac. It's possible the drive just isn't formatted for the reckoner you're trying to use, and y'all'll need to re-create that data onto a drive that's formatted for cantankerous-compatibility.

Update Your Drivers

Occasionally, Windows runs into driver problems that will return a device unrecognizable. Open the Start menu, type "device manager," and press Enter when the selection appears. Expand the Disk Drives menu and the Universal Serial Bus menu to come across if your external drive appears in either set up. If yous see an entry that looks like your drive with a yellow exclamation marker, right-click on the device and choose Properties—you may find an error code y'all can Google. Y'all tin can likewise head to the Driver tab and try updating or uninstalling the driver and rebooting your computer.

Unremarkably, hard drives but employ Windows' built-in USB and difficult disk drivers, so this isn't likely to ready a temperamental drive, only it'due south worth a shot. (Y'all tin likewise attempt downloading drivers from the drive manufacturer'due south website, but once more, that's probably a long shot.) Check out our guide to updating your drivers for more details on this process.

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Enable and Format the Drive in Disk Direction

If your drive is powered on but still isn't appearing in File Explorer, information technology's time to do some earthworks. Open up the Commencement bill of fare and type "disk direction," and press Enter when theCreate and Format Hard disk Partitions pick appears. Once Disk Management loads, curl down to see if your disk appears in the list. If it does, make sure it's online and formatted. If it'due south offline, correct-click the disk's proper name (east.one thousand. "Disk ii") and choose Online.

If the disk hasn't been formatted (it'll say "Unallocated" under a black bar), right-click information technology and chooseNew Simple Volume. This will besides solve the problem if the drive is formatted for another operating system, as described in a higher place. Exist warned that formatting it will erase any data on the drive, so only proceed if y'all're sure y'all don't need anything from it.

Finally, if your bulldoze is online and formatted, simply doesn't testify a drive letter side by side to its proper noun, right-click the volume and chooseChange Bulldoze Letter and Paths to add a drive letter. If you're lucky, i of these simple steps should go your new drive upward and running.

Clean the Deejay and Beginning From Scratch

In some more specific cases, the drive volition announced in Disk Management, but merely formatting the drive won't work. This is extremely common with SD cards formatted with Linux distributions for the Raspberry Pi, for instance.

To regain your drive's full capacity, yous'll need to run Windows' "clean" control, which volition return the drive to a completely unformatted state. Once again, this will erase annihilation on information technology, so but go along if y'all take no other options—and make extra sure you're cleaning the correct disk, or you could lose a lot of information.

Open up the Start menu, type "diskpart," and press Enter to open the run command. When the prompt appears, type "listing disk" and printing Enter to see the disks plugged into your system. If you lot see the bulldoze in question appear—pay shut attention to its size—make a note of its name. We'll use "Disk two" in this example.

Blazon "select disk 2" and press Enter to select the disk you want to clean. Finally, type "clean" and press Enter. This volition erase the disk, at which indicate you tin can follow the to a higher place steps to format it from the Disk Management console.

Remove and Exam the Bare Drive

Sabrent USB three.0 to SATA External Hard Bulldoze

If none of the above options work, y'all should remove the drive from its external enclosure and test the drive on its own. The components that convert that SATA drive into USB can fail, meaning the drive could be just fine if yous connect it some other way.

If you take a desktop PC available, and the technological know-how, you can open it upwards and plug the drive directly into your motherboard. If non, buy a new external SATA-to-USB adapter dock(Opens in a new window) or enclosure(Opens in a new window), plug your bare drive into that, then connect that to your PC over USB.

If it works, then your old enclosure (or its power supply) may be dead. If your drive withal isn't recognized, yous may accept a dead drive. Contact the manufacturer to see if you're still under warranty, and make sure your other hard drives are in working society.

Our Favorite External Hard Drives

ADATA HD830 (Photo: Zlata Ivleva)

If your drive is across repair, it might be fourth dimension for a new i. Cheque out PCMag'southward roundup of the all-time difficult drives, wireless drives, and rugged drives. We too have roundups of the best drives for Mac.

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