Flash Drive Not Recognized

You have to copy some important data from your pen drive onto the computer hard drive. You plug in the USB drive and nothing happens, or you get an error which says something like USB flash drive not recognized. What would you do then?

Flash drives need no introduction and almost everyone owns it today for quick data transfer and data storage purpose. Flash drives are also known by other names such as jump drives, pen drives, thumb drives, USB sticks, and others. There can be times when these useful data devices may give some problems when they are connected to a computer. The most common problem when the USB device is connected to a computer is the 'not recognized' error.

When you get such kind of error, the foremost troubleshooting step that you need to take is to shut down the computer, remove the pen drive from the port, and try again after sometime. By shutting down the system and restarting it again, the computer will reload the drivers of the removable drive, after which the pen drive may eventually start to function. If this basic step does not seem to work, you may move on to the following steps.

Reasons and Solutions

Computer Virus
Many a time, computers may get infected by a virus, which is why it may function in a somewhat weird manner. This may even affect the proper functionality of any USB device which is connected to the system. For preventing such a problem, it is recommended to install a good antivirus software and periodically scan and clean your computer. Purchase a licensed and updated version which not only will prevent any infection from malware, trojans, spyware, and other computer viruses; but will also scan a USB data storage device as soon as it is connected to the computer.

Device Driver Corrupted or Not Present
There are also possibilities that the USB device driver may get corrupted, due to which the flash drive may not be recognized. To troubleshoot this problem, you will have to first uninstall the driver and then reinstall it again. You can do so by uninstalling the appropriate driver from the device manager, which can be accessed through 'My Computer' or 'Control Panel'. To install the drivers back again, use the CD that came along with the drive. In older operating systems, there are no such drivers present in the computer. So, for the drive to be recognized, you have to install the drivers from the driver CD first.

No Connection in The Port
If you are trying to plug in the drive to the USB port which is located in front of the CPU cabinet, it may not work and you might not even get any error. The reason is simply that the extension cables may not be incorporated to provide the connection at the front. In case you were previously using the front USB ports without any issues, and you are now getting the device unrecognizable error, the extension cables may be at fault. You need to open the cabinet and check for the problem in the connections.

If any of the above troubleshooting steps do not seem to work, then probably the drive itself is to blame. To make sure that the drive is working properly, use it on another computer and check if it works fine. If you get an error similar to flash drive not recognized, shut down the PC, remove the USB connection, and check after rebooting. If it still does not work, then probably the USB device is faulty and you should try with another drive or USB device.