USB drives detected but not shown in Computer

HappyDragon · 27 Jan 2013

Dear sevenforums users,

it s been a while since i have been having this problem with usb external drives .
As written in the title my pc does detect them but they re not shown in computer.
I have to point out i dont get any problems when i plug my phone in the pc , it recognizes the smartphone and i can browse the folders , upload and download pics , etc etc.

All the usb sticks are shown in the device manager

USB drives detected but not shown in Computer-device-manager.png

I tried to remove and install all the drivers , still having the same problem.

I thought i had to assign them a driver letter but when i try to do it, disk management comes up with this error :

USB drives detected but not shown in Computer-diskmanagement-error.png

Dunno if might be useful to you but here their details through diskpart:

USB drives detected but not shown in Computer-diskpart.png

You re my last hope XD .
Thank you in advance

mlg3000 · 27 Jan 2013

I searched for that exact error about the disk console and found a microsoft fixit - just yesterday. It seems that Microsoft updates its driver recognition list and if somehow you haven't done so (perhaps a minor update you chose not to install), Microsoft will eventually refuse to recognize. Google the entire error message. Checking my download logs it might be fixit 50688 - but check that.

In my case I also ended up having to check the security on the console and had to reset it so that the admin owned it rather than the system. When it still wasn't happy, Everyone owned it and since then it's been working fine.

Hope this helps.

Madeline

essenbe · 27 Jan 2013

Have you tried to create a partition, format and assign it a drive letter In diskpart?
diskpart
list disk
select disk 1
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
format fs=ntfs quick (or format fs=fat32 quick if you want fat)
assign
exit
exit

HappyDragon · 27 Jan 2013

It doesnt work , there are no volumes....

USB drives detected but not shown in Computer-dddd.png

I tried to create a volume as well but it says "a disk specified is not dynamic. Please specify a dynamic disk and try again"

ICIT2LOL · 27 Jan 2013

Hum try this Happy D it may come up with something for you.

Best Free Partition Manager Freeware and free partition magic for Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

essenbe · 27 Jan 2013

That was my next suggestion. Here is the tutorial on using it. Use the bootable one. Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD
Does your computer do this with all USB drives, or just this one?

ICIT2LOL · 27 Jan 2013

essenbe said:

That was my next suggestion. Here is the tutorial on using it. Use the bootable one. Partition Wizard : Use the Bootable CD
Does your computer do this with all USB drives, or just this one?

Thanks mate didn't know that was there even

HappyDragon · 27 Jan 2013

essenbe said:

Does your computer do this with all USB drives, or just this one?

all of them , i tried the 2 usb sticks on my laptop and they re fine.

Right, thank you guys for the support so far
I ll give minitool a whirl later , i m off to bed now it s quite late here XD .

Night Hawk · 27 Jan 2013

Has anyone ever heard of the Disk Management tool? When going into Control Panel>Administrative tools>Computer Management>Storage>Disk Management you should see the factory volume(Fat 32) once the flash drive or other external device is properly detected. If you added an SD card into a cell phone or to a digital camera that will be seen as a storage medium as well.

Once you have located the volume you simply right click on that to select the change drive letter option. This will generally initialize the drive or device on the spot. If you should see the "offline" showing in the square area on the left side clicking on that to set it to online or going to the menu bar>Actions to select the rescan all disks option can also help.

Once the drive or device is assigned a drive letter you will then see that in use when opening up a new explorer window and looking down the list of drives. In most cases as soon as you use the Change drive letter option a new popup will flash indicating the item was initialized and is now available for use.

essenbe · 27 Jan 2013

Night Hawk, yes I heard of it once. But after seeing the second screenshot in post #1 figured that wouldn't work.