Flash drive not showing up in My Computer.

Gozoman, you are wasting your time. Anything you do on the flash drive can make things worst to recover if your problem is on the drive (I personally think it's not).
So to find out if the problem is on the drive or on your computer you have to try it fist on another computer.

You may try testdisk and see your flash drive shows up there or not.
If it does you can recover data from there.
After that you may clean the drive.

Eric3742 said:

Gozoman said:

By the way when I uninstalled again just now, removed from computer, re-booted the computer and then plugged the drive back in the message came up saying that the Sandisk drive had been installed successfully and was ready to use. Still didn't show up in My Computer but it did show in Widows Explorer. However when I checked in properties by right clicking it showed both used space and free space as 0 bytes!

If this situation happen, then do the partition things to check.


Maybe another application may help.

ISO buster

This application can read disc that are not able to see in normal windows explorer.

What i am trying to tell you is to find those application that able to read hidden folders.
I do not mean about windows explorer folder type.

The 0 byte is that it may have locked or encrypted in the drive.
Try to remember which USB port did you slot that flash drive, or something similar to.

I have seen many flash drive with such 0 byte, as locked, like i said, CD/DVD disc &or bootable.

I am only guessing, as this is the way i do my own troubleshooting.
Recall on what i had done before.

Thaks I'll have a look for this ISO Buster as I don't have it on my computer.

Beowulf1 said:

You may try testdisk and see your flash drive shows up there or not.
If it does you can recover data from there.
After that you may clean the drive.

Tried Testdisk but my drive didn't show up.

Update. Got the following advice which I followed and was able to recover all my files.

"Download Fatdog64. Burn the iso to a CD with Imgburn or on any Windows 7 or later computer you can right click the iso file and select Burn Disk Image. Boot Fatdog and then attach your USB flash drive. If it is detected it you will see a USB icon appear on the desktop and a File Manager window will open showing the files on the flash drive. If Fatdog can mount the USB flash drive post back and I will give instructions on how to copy the files off the flash drive using Fatdog."
Fatdog64 Linux

since your drive is being recognised and the drivers seem to be loaded, you should check first if it shows up in device manager as a mass storage device. then check disk management to see if it shows up with the right size and partitioning. did you ever format the drive as ext4 or any other format unknown by windows, it will not show up in windows. you might need a second party partitioner to get it working in windows.

PimpleMaze said:

since your drive is being recognised and the drivers seem to be loaded, you should check first if it shows up in device manager as a mass storage device. then check disk management to see if it shows up with the right size and partitioning. did you ever format the drive as ext4 or any other format unknown by windows, it will not show up in windows. you might need a second party partitioner to get it working in windows.

Hi there, see my last message as the problem is now solved. Thanks anyway.