The flash card does not open on the computer. Typical problems with flash drives

Using a flash drive, you can very quickly copy information and transfer it to another computer. Despite the fact that there are no moving parts in them, flash drives sometimes still break, and then we will consider the question of why a flash drive does not open on a computer.

You should not immediately resort to flashing the memory controller of a flash drive if any problems arise. First you need to try the most simple options. For example, first you need to conduct an external inspection of the flash drive and make sure its integrity, and then carry out manipulations at the program level.

One of common problems with flash drives is their infection with a virus Auto run. After fast cleaning antivirus on the flash drive remain hidden files, which can be the reason why the flash drive does not open. You need to try to enter the USB flash drive forcibly through the explorer or any file manager, and then delete all hidden junk files.

If it is impossible to copy and delete a file on a flash drive, as well as go to a folder, then this may be a failure in the file system. You can try to fix this problem by Windows itself by checking the flash drive. To do this, press right click mouse and go to . Then go to the tab "Service", and in the graph "Check disk" choose "Perform check". In the additional window, we can choose "Auto-correct system errors» and "Check and repair bad sectors".

If the flash drive is completely hopeless and you can’t access it, all that remains is to try formatting. Moreover, if you choose a quick format, there is a chance to restore the files on it.

In the article: I described how to open a flash drive. Here I will describe in more detail how to properly connect a USB flash drive and open files that are recorded on a storage medium. So, if yours doesn't open right away, don't panic. Take a deep breath in and out. Get together and do work on the errors when connecting. Your mistakes and your actions:

You connected via USB hubs, recognition problems may occur. A "Disk is not formatted" window may appear with the message: "The disk in the device is not formatted. Do you want to format it? Not really". Don't click yes. Formatting will delete all your information. Connect flash drive to root USB hub located on the back of the processor. If the message “The drive in the device is not formatted. Do you want to format it? Yes/No” appears even after connecting the flash drive to the USB root hub, you need to restart the PC or check the disk.

If, when accessing the flash drive, we do not see our files, but the properties of the removable disk indicate that the system type is unknown and the flash drive is empty, disconnect and reconnect the flash drive through the icon Safe extraction device and reboot the system.

You connected more than one flash drive to the PC at the same time, the second may not appear. We get access to it through My computer. If the OS "saw" the flash drive, it can be disabled through the Safely Remove Hardware icon. In order not to restart the OS, start Windows Explorer not through My Computer, but through the button Start –> Programs –> Accessories –> Explorer –> My Documents –> press the button Up –> Desktop –> My Computer –> Removable drive . You can also try to "open" the flash drive through an alternative file manager, such as Total Commander.

If, after correctly removing one flash drive, it is not possible to connect another. On the Windows Explorer the “phantom” of the previous flash drive is preserved: its icon has a red circle with a white question mark inside, and when you click on the icon, an error message appears that the removable disk icon refers to an inaccessible place. Restart your computer.

Yours is infected with a special virus. These viruses on the infected PC are constantly loaded into RAM and track USB ports for connection removable devices. If you are copying information from your flash drive to an external PC, turn on the write lock. If your flash drive does not have a write lock, then disable questionable processes in Task Manager Window s. To launch the Manager Windows tasks click Ctrl+Alt+Delete or Start –> Run… –> Start program –> taskmgr –> OK. Open Processes, left-click the process to end, click End Process, and in the Task Manager Warning window that appears, click Yes.

Due to a virus, when you try to open a USB flash drive by clicking the left mouse button, an error message appears that it is impossible to open the USB flash drive, because. some file is missing, usually autorun.inf. Open the flash drive by right-clicking the context menu - Explorer or Open. This virus prescribes an autorun flash drive for its further distribution. We treat the flash drive with an antivirus or delete the file manually. The entry about the autorun of the flash drive remains in the Windows Registry.

When accessing files, the messages "Cannot find the file<Имя_файла>. Create new file with that name? or "Unable to create file<Имя_файла>. Check the correctness of the path and file name”, because There was a failure in the file system of the flash drive. In the properties of the flash drive, information appears that the file system type is unknown, the capacity is 0 bytes, 0 bytes used, 0 bytes free. Urgently check and correct errors in the file system of a removable disk.

Sometimes computer device does not see the inserted flash drive, it may look like this:

1. The message “insert disk” appears on the PC, despite the connection of the USB flash drive.
2. An icon is displayed that the flash drive is connected, the corresponding sound is played, but the device itself is not visible in the explorer.
3. A message appears stating that formatting is required.
4. A notification pops up about a data error that has occurred.
5. When you connect a flash drive, the entire system freezes.
6. The computer sees the flash drive, but the BIOS does not see it.
7. Other failures may also occur.

Motherboard problems

On the this stage pay attention to the BIOS motherboard, whether it is sewn in it latest version. New versions are coming external drives, increase the speed and amount of information carried. Therefore, the flash drive is not detected and the computer does not see it. If the motherboard has been running for a long time, updates have already stopped coming out. Then this method is excluded.

The BIOS can be configured to configure USB devices, for example, support for drives large capacity. Check what state these settings are in. They are located in the "Peripherals" section.

You need to make sure that when you insert a removable drive into USB port, power is supplied to it - the indicator should light up. If this does not happen, there is a possibility that the port itself is faulty. To test this, you can plug the USB flash drive into an adjacent USB port. First of all, you will stick it into one of the front ports of the system unit. What if it is not connected inside, there is no jumper coming from a special USB connector to system board? Check it out by opening the case. personal computer. This connector looks like this:

If this does not help, you can try inserting the USB flash drive into any other device: radio or TV. Then you can definitely determine whether the matter is in the drive itself or not.

Solving problems with a flash drive using standard Windows methods

Windows Power Saving System

Suppose the computer stopped seeing the USB flash drive unexpectedly after a long time of inactivity. What to do? Most likely, you have the power saving function turned on. It lies in the fact that if you do not use USB devices for a long time, the system stops supplying power to these ports. You can change its settings by finding the “Power Options” icon in the Control Panel. Then set up a “Balanced” or “High Performance” scheme by changing Extra options nutrition.

Power management can also be configured for an individual connected USB disk. Open Device Manager, then " USB controllers”, then with the help of the right mouse button - the properties of the storage device and a tick to disable the shutdown of this device to save energy.

If opposite the flash drive is on yellow triangle or written "Nunknown device" or is located in the "Other devices" column - in it the flash drive can be under its real name. Also, sometimes it can be displayed "USB mass storage device".

Click on the device with a computer mouse, remove this device from the system, and then add it by updating the hardware configuration - maybe this simple action is enough to display the flash drive.

Microsoft diagnostic utility

Let's move on to a simple standard Microsoft utility. It is compatible with Windows 10, 8.1 and 7. We go to the help on the official Microsoft website and look for “Automatically diagnose and fix USB problems in Windows”. By clicking the “Download” button, we get this utility on our computer, open the WinUSB file and carry out diagnostics.

1. The flash drive is not readable when connected through a special port due to the fact that the registry uses filters of the upper and lower types.
2. The flash drive cannot be seen if damaged filters are used.
3. It could also be a problem with the USB printer. Let's say there was a failure at the time of printing. In such a situation, turning off the device will become impossible.
4. The flash drive is not ejected when the button is pressed, which safely ejects the hardware. An error message may appear. Run all programs that use this device and try again.
5. Windows system updates are configured so that drivers cannot be updated. If such updates appear, they are automatically installed.

Disk Management

The drive letter of the USB drive can be the same as another drive letter. Let's check this with Windows tools, which is called "Disk Management". For example, in Windows 10, in the "This PC" window, at the top, click on the "Manage" icon. As a result, "Computer Management" will appear.

Two more options:

• "Start" - "Run", command diskmgmt.msc, press Enter.
• Control Panel - Administrative Tools - Computer Management - Disk Management.

In the "Disk Management" section, we look at the names of all volumes on the computer. Here you can change the drive letter. This tool will help determine the health of the removable device.

Important point: in the disk management window, monitor whether the flash drive appears and disappears at the moment it is connected and disconnected from the computer device.

The best option is that if the connected USB flash drive is visible to the device, each partition on it has a “healthy” state. In this situation, you just need to click on it with the right mouse button, make a choice in the menu "activate section". Maybe the flash drive will have to be marked with a letter - and this is quite enough for the computer to recognize the flash drive. If a partition malfunctions or is deleted, you will immediately see “no distribution”. Click on it, and if you see a similar item in the menu, make a choice in favor of "create simple volume". Thus, it will be possible to create a partition and format the flash drive (but in this case, all data will be deleted).

If the disk management utility marks the flash drive as "unknown" or "uninitialized", the flash drive may be damaged. In such a situation, you should try to restore all the data.

If you have been creating partitions on flash drives that are not supported by the operating system, you will have to delete these partitions.

The USB flash drive does not open on the computer: what to do next?

Try to commit direct connection to the system unit, not using an extension cable or USB hub, if used.

Try to plug the drive into all existing slots. Turn off the computer device, disconnect other devices from USB (for example, a printer or a webcam). Leave the keyboard, mouse and flash drive. Next, connect your computer device. If this helped, and the flash drive was displayed on the screen, then your PC's power supply is not powerful enough, and you need to solve this problem directly. That is, you need to change the power supply or buy a USB hub with a personal power source.

Run USBOblivion, remove information about drives from the registry

Disconnect all flash drives and other devices from the PC. Run the program with the items marked "perform a real cleanup and save the undo .reg file." Then click on the "clear" button.

As soon as everything is cleared, restart the computer and connect the USB flash drive - as a rule, it appears and becomes available. If this does not happen, go to the device manager (using the "Start" button), remove the drive from the section dedicated to other devices. Update the hardware configuration. To download the USBOblivion program, you can use the official website of the developer.

Procedure for uninstalling drivers for all USB devices

The step by step instructions are:

1. Turn off your computer device along with all storage (and other) USB devices. As for the mouse and keyboard, you can leave them alone - of course, if they do not have a built-in card reader.
2. Turn on your PC again.
3. The third step is to download the DriveCleanup utility (for this, use the official website of its developer). The program is compatible with all modern operating systems.
4. Copy yourself one of the versions of drivecleanup.exe (depending on which version of the Windows operating system is installed) to the C folder.
5. The next stage is launch command line on behalf of the administrator. In it we write drivecleanup.exe and press enter.

Watch how all drivers and entries about them in the registry of the operating system are removed.

What else additional actions What can be done to identify the causes of problems with the computer not recognizing the flash drive?

1. Check your computer for viruses - because of them, sometimes the computer does not see the USB flash drive.
2. Check the operating system registry, specifically the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\ Software\ Microsoft\Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Policies\ Explorer . Did you see an indicator in this column called NoDrives? Delete it and reboot your computer device.
3. Sometimes you need to completely turn off the power of the PC. You do it this way: turn off all flash drives, turn off the device. Then hold down the power button for a couple of seconds. The computer does not need to be turned on. Then release the button, connect the power supply, turn on the computer. Sometimes it helps.

Treatment of a flash drive that the computer does not see

In computer management, you can find the inserted USB flash drive, but it is faulty or the space is not allocated. It is likely that the flash drive is damaged and all data has been deleted. Then you should turn to special utilities for recovering files from removable drives.

To increase the chances of data recovery, it is better not to write new files to the same flash drive and have other media for the recovered data.

For example, consider the most famous program for recovery - Recuva. It is easy to use and free, which is why it is so popular among inexperienced users.

We download it from the official site. During installation, select the Russian language, then the types of files to be found.

If you do not remember which files were saved on the media, then leave it as it is. We mark the place where you want to find the lost data.

The program uses simple or advanced analysis. The last way the most effective, but it will take a little more time. Files for recovery are marked with a green circle, and those that have already been lost are marked with a red circle.

So we have considered the question of why the computer does not see the USB flash drive, and what can be done to fix this problem. When on removable media valuable information is located, and the computer does not see the USB flash drive, then you should not immediately get upset. There are many ways to try to solve this problem. About them and described above. If the flash drive is already damaged, then you should contact special utility for recovery, for example, Recuva.

Reasons and possible ways solutions to the problem for which the flash drive does not open, we will consider in this article. Usually, when you try to open a non-working USB flash drive, the system displays messages, "Media not found" or "Media not formatted." The fact that a flash drive is generally determined by the system is good sign showing that all is not lost. Before you start restoring the flash drive, you need to decide what to do with the information on the flash drive.

If the information on the flash drive is of value to you, then we will first deal with retrieving it from a faulty flash drive, and only then bringing the drive into good condition.

We will not go into a discussion of why the flash drive does not open, the reasons can be varied and the discussion of each will take a lot of time. Better get down to business, so let's start with the most simple actions that can lead to the desired result. First you need to exclude the possibility of infection of the flash drive with viruses.

We check the flash drive with any antivirus program with up-to-date virus databases. It is possible that after removing the viruses, the flash drive will restore working condition, but sometimes not, it all depends on the type of virus that infected the drive. Usually, all modern antiviruses embed their line in the context menu of the properties of files and folders.

Right-click on the flash drive icon and select "Scan" from the menu that appears. V this example scanning is carried out by the AVAST anti-virus program.

How to secure your flash drive for the future, from virus threat, and no matter what version of the drive, usb flash drive or memory card, read the articles and.

If the matter was not viral infection, then proceed to check the drive.

Check and restore using Windows

Windows has its own tool for checking and repairing drives. Right-click on the flash drive icon, select "Properties" then the "Service" tab.

Then a warning window will appear. We agree, click on the message and the check begins.

You can do the same in Disk Management.

Or through the console, press "Win" + "R" Run the command " cmd"And press the button" Enter", And then enter the following construction: chkdsk X: / f / r

Where the letter X - replace with the letter of your flash drive, leave everything else unchanged!

For those who are especially curious: the /F flag - fixes errors, and the /R flag - to search for bad sectors.

It happens that with conventional way open a USB flash drive, double click on the drive icon, you can’t open the USB flash drive, but using stationary application "Explorer" (which is in any operating system Windows families) is able to do so.

We find in the explorer (a tree of files, folders and disks, usually located on the left) our flash drive and try to open the drive. If we managed to open the contents of the drive, then we try to copy the necessary information.

With successful copying of data, you can proceed to restoring the performance of the flash drive, to formatting. What is formatting and how to do it, read at the end of the article. In the meantime, consider the option in which it is not possible to copy files.

File recovery software

Then more powerful means come into the business of saving information, special programs to restore files. The following are especially good in this matter: EasyRecovery, R-Studio, RecoverMyFiles. These programs, unlike the operating system, do not require information about disk layout, scanning cluster after cluster, relying on signatures, they stick together file fragments.

After important information saved, you can proceed to recovery.

If the flash drive is defined as a drive and allows you to enter the properties, then we try to format it using the forces of the operating system itself.

We click on the flash drive with the right mouse button and select the format item, specify the desired file system (more about the features file systems, you can read in the article -), and in the "Formatting Method" parameter, do not check the box.

With this method (without a checkmark in the “Quick” box), the physical surface of the drive is first scanned and if damaged sectors are found, they are marked and no recording is made on them in the future, thereby restoring performance. If the formatting was successful, then the performance of the flash drive has been restored.

Restoring the performance of a flash drive using formatting with special programs

If you can't format standard methods then let's get help third party programs, For example: hard drive low level format tool or HP USB Disk Storage format tool.

Data and similar programs, formats blocking corrupted memory cells and clears the partition tables, these actions allow you to restore the flash drive

More and more users use non-CD and DVD discs, but small and convenient flash drives. The advantages are obvious: compactness, the possibility of reusable recording, they are not afraid of scratches, like optical media. But on the other hand, it is just a device that cannot last forever.

So, if you have connected a flash drive to your computer, but it is not readable, try using the following ways in order to revive her.

Check for integrity

First, check if the USB interface is normally attached to the body of the USB flash drive. If it comes off more on one side than the other, it's most likely a contact problem. If you know how, you can solder them yourself, but it's better to take the flash drive for repair.

Also check your device for mechanical damage: cracks, deep scratches, dents. Because of them, the elements of the board could be damaged, then data recovery would be impossible. If water or moisture gets into the flash drive, wait until it dries out, and then connect it to the computer.

Choose a different port

Another reason why the USB flash drive does not open on the computer is the USB ports of the computer. It may simply be faulty - connect to a different port. If you connect a USB flash drive to the ports located on the front of the system unit, try to do it from the back of it. The fact is that when assembling the system unit, the front USB ports could simply not be connected to the motherboard.

Lack of nutrition

This option is also possible - the USB flash drive does not have enough power from the USB port to work. Disconnect from the computer all connected USB devices that you do not use: webcam, printer, scanner, etc. This may be due to the fact that in system block low power supply installed. For further use of the flash drive, it is better to purchase a USB hub with additional power.

Drive letter change

If the flash drive is still not readable on the computer, then go to the Start menu. There we right-click on the item "Computer" and from context menu select "Management".

In the Computer Management window on the left side, click "Memory Devices" – "Disk Management". Here we are looking for a flash drive, if it is not defined, then it can be thrown away.

If you have created virtual disks earlier, it is possible that the flash drive was assigned an already used letter. Right click on the flash drive and select "Change Drive Letter or Drive Path", in the next window, click "Change" and select a letter that is not yet used.

Reinstall drivers

Problems with opening a flash drive can also arise due to drivers. Go to the tab "Device Manager" and double tap mouse click to expand the list "USB controllers". Find the flash drive here and right-click on it. You can choose from the list or "Update drivers" or "Delete". Remove the flash drive and insert it back into the computer - the drivers will be installed automatically.

If automatic installation drivers did not happen, then you can independently find the drivers by the device instance code. If you have an operating Windows system 7, then look in the list "Hardware ID".

Format your device

Another method that can be used if the flash drive does not open on the computer is formatting. To do this, go to the "My Computer" folder and right-click on the flash drive. From the context menu select "Format…".

In the formatting window, click the button "Restore default settings". Then check the "Quick" checkbox and click "Start". Please note that after this procedure, all data from the flash drive will be erased. But after quick format you can try to restore them, for example, using the Recuva program.

If everything went well, then the flash drive should work. If formatting was not completed, try low-level formatting for a flash drive using the program hard disk low left format tool.

Virus removal

A flash drive can also not be read on a computer due to viruses. Check it out with antivirus program. If after removing all malicious files, the flash drive still does not open, go to "Start" - "Control Panel" – "Folders settings".

On the View tab, check "Show hidden files, folders and drives", click OK .

Now in the folder "My Computer" open the flash drive, find the file "autorun.exe" there and delete it.

These are all the methods known to me, because of which the flash drive may not open on the computer. I think at least one of them will help you.

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