Apr 11 2013

The computer does not see the flash drive - there is a solution

Hello. Your The computer does not see the flash drive, memory card or HDD and you are wondering what to do? Surely every computer user has experienced a similar situation, or even more than one.

Today I will help you with resolving issues if your computers do not see flash drives and others similar devices. I’ll tell you what problems there are with displaying usb devices and how to solve them.

Display problems

By the way, the last article was about data recovery from a flash drive. If you are interested in this, then replenish your knowledge.

Your computer does not see or detect the flash drive, hard drive and memory card. let's consider possible reasons the situation. At the end of the article, don’t forget to watch a visual video lesson on how to make a flash drive or hard drive work.

A short outline of the article

• Device Definition
• Power indicator
• Front USB ports
• Not enough food
• USB disabled in BIOS
• USB device not recognized
• Outdated drivers
• Viruses
• Different file systems
• Conclusion

Determining the device

The first step is to determine exactly how the computer does not see your USB drive. From this answer it will be clear whether it is possible or not.

To do this, you need to go to Windows Device Manager.

In order to enter it, you need to right-click on the my computer shortcut on the desktop or in the start menu, go to properties, click on device manager.

After that, select disk devices.

We got to the device manager and the disk devices tab. If your flash drive or memory card appears in this list, then it is highly likely that you can recover data on it. If there is no flash drive there, then the memory card controller is most likely burned out. I recommend trying to connect your USB device to other computers.

If nothing changes and the flash drive is still not visible, then the problem is probably a faulty controller. It’s unlikely that you will extract data from such a USB device; you can, of course, contact special institutions that do this (they are not in all cities), but they will charge you a tidy sum for the work. So think about whether you need it or not.

Your flash drive is visible as a device, but it does not appear in my computer or Explorer, or asks to be formatted. To do this you need to go to disk management. To get into it you need to perform the following steps. Here are screenshots for clarity:

Right-click on my computer and go to management.

Go to disk management.

The device is displayed, writes its volume and file system - it is ready for use and functions normally.

The device is displayed, shows its capacity, but does not display the file system and writes “not defined”. In order to use it, you need to right-click in the Not Defined window and select Format.

You can check the quick formatting box and click OK. After the device is formatted, it should work in normal operating mode.

Displayed as a removable device, says no media and does not show the file system. All these parameters indicate that this device is not working properly, there is internal or external damage to the controller. You can hardly read information from such a flash drive without special expensive equipment.

Power indicator

When you connect the flash drive to the computer, a small indicator on the USB device should light up. If it lights up and starts blinking, then everything is fine with the flash drive, but not with the operating system, you need to look for the reason in it. If the flash drive indicator does not light up, then the problem may be in the device itself or the connected port of the computer.

Front USB ports

There have been cases when a flash drive is connected to a computer via the front USB ports, but the flash drive does not work. Perhaps these front usbs are turned off or they forgot to connect them to the motherboard.

Not enough power

Power shortage mainly occurs when connecting hard drives through the front USB ports of the computer, hubs and hubs. It is best to connect such devices directly to the USB connectors on the motherboard, that is, at the back of the computer. If you use a usb hub or hub, then disconnect unnecessary devices, this may help. The reason may also be a low-power computer power supply.

USB disabled in BIOS

This problem is rare. Mainly in computer clubs and similar entertainment establishments. What is it for? To prevent a person from introducing viruses and downloading various programs and unnecessary information onto the computer. This is more of a protective measure. If this home computer, then you need to go to the settings and check the box to enable the launch of usb devices in the motherboard.

USB device not recognized

The usb device is not recognized and when you connect a flash drive, the operating system gives it an already used letter (volume label in use). This does not always happen; there are other cases. In order to fix this you need to go to the computer control panel.

I showed how to enter it above, or you can open the Run window - keyboard shortcut Win + R (checkbox between Ctrl and Alt plus the letter R) and type the command diskmgmt.msc. Go to disk management, find the desired device - a flash drive, right-click on it and select Change drive letter or drive path. In the window that appears, you can add or change this letter.

Outdated drivers

It is possible that your drivers are outdated - update them. To do this, you need to find out what manufacturer and model of your motherboard. Usually written on the packaging box, if you saved them, of course. If not, then use the Everest or Aida program.

Using them, you can find out the model of your motherboard and a lot of other useful information about your computer. After you have found out everything, you need to go to the official website of the manufacturer and find the desired system board and download drivers for the chipset and usb device, if any.

Viruses

There have been cases where the computer does not recognize the flash drive due to viruses that have appeared in your operating system. To do this, I recommend using good anti-virus programs and doing a full virus scan at least once a month. If you don't have it, you can use a free antivirus, or purchase a paid product.

Different file systems

This happens, but very rarely. Your computer does not see the flash drive due to a conflict between the computer’s file systems and USB devices. Most flash drives work in two file FAT systems and FAT32, and hard disks to NTFS.

You can try formatting your flash drive in a different format such as FAT32 or NTFS. Maybe after this everything will work fine.

Helpful information. On a flash drive in FAT and FAT32 format, you can upload information in one file of no more than 4 Gigabytes, and on a hard drive much more. Therefore, if you encounter such a problem, be prepared for it and keep it in mind.

And for dessert, watch a short video tutorial on how to make your computer see a flash drive and hard drive. For convenient and enjoyable viewing, I recommend watching this video in full screen, that is, in full screen mode.

The computer does not recognize the flash drive and hard drive

Conclusion

And I also have some news. Yesterday my email account was hacked. I tried to restore it, but to no avail. I filled out the form to the support service, the answer should be sent within 3 working days, I will wait for news. If everything goes well and I can restore my mail, I will definitely write a separate article about this. After all this problem Happens to many Internet users.

Perhaps you have any questions or questions - your computer does not see the flash drive. You can ask them below in the comments to this article, and also use the form with me.

Thank you for reading me on

Article content:

Mobile flash media have gained wide popularity for their undeniable advantages over other external storage devices. It is probably impossible to overestimate the benefits that USB flash drives bring to users. You can very quickly record the necessary information on a flash drive, it is convenient to always carry it with you, and it costs an order of magnitude cheaper than an external hard drive. Users who actively use USB drives have probably at least once encountered an unpleasant problem when the computer does not see the flash drive.

At the most crucial moment, you can lose access to important recorded information and find yourself in a difficult situation. There may be several reasons why the computer does not see the flash drive. In most cases, the situation is fixable and your non-working USB drive can be returned to normal operation. Sometimes the problem with the computer detecting a flash drive lies entirely in the computer itself and the USB drive has nothing to do with it. We will analyze in detail the most common causes of malfunctions and ways to solve them.

If you encounter a flash drive malfunction, then probably one of its reasons is listed below:

The USB flash drive itself does not work

Problem: This option is the most unfavorable for the user because in this case it is almost impossible to bring the flash drive back to life. A flash drive becomes unusable if the chip is mechanically damaged, if the built-in controller fails, or if the electrical circuit is shorted. You can also lose the functionality of a USB flash drive if the contacts on the board are physically damaged (with active mechanical impact on USB port flash drives).

Determining the irreversible failure of a flash drive is quite simple: insert it into the computer and monitor what is happening. If the indicator light is on USB drive did not light up, you did not hear the characteristic sound of connecting a flash drive and the computer does not see a new connection, then most likely the failure is fatal. If the indicator light is on and the characteristic connection sound is heard, then there is still a chance of returning to functionality.

Solution: In the event of a fatal failure, when the computer does not see the flash drive and there are no visible signs of its performance, the result is disappointing. It is almost impossible to solve such a problem. You can try to take the drive to a workshop, where perhaps a technician will resolder the contacts, but this will be unreasonably expensive and will only help if the contacts are physically damaged.

If there is a non-fatal malfunction (the computer does not see the flash drive, but after connecting the indicator light is on), you should try the methods that will be discussed below.

The USB port on the front panel of the computer is de-energized

Problem: Owners personal computers Very often they insert a flash drive into the USB connectors on the front panel of the computer, because it is fast and convenient. There are times when, when assembling a computer, the cable from the USB ports on the front panel is forgotten to be connected to the motherboard, or for some reason it comes off. Naturally, if the USB connector is de-energized, the computer does not see the user’s flash drive.

Solution: There are two solutions to this problem. The first is to connect a flash drive using the rear USB ports, while the front connectors remain inoperable and this is difficult to consider as a complete solution.

The second is more productive and involves connecting a cable from the front USB ports to the computer’s motherboard. Depending on the computer model and the number of USB connectors on the front panel, the cables may have different designs. In this case, the marking of individual wires remains unchanged. Most often, four wires labeled “VCC”, “D-”, “D+” and “GND” are connected to the connector. In addition, they are color coded red, white, green and black, respectively (in rare cases, it does not match the cable and the motherboard, use the labels as a guide).

We connect the USB cable to the connector on the motherboard. See below for what the connector should look like.

The meaning of the contacts can be seen below.

It will be better if the connection is made knowledgeable person. If the cable is connected incorrectly to the connector (for example, if the wires are mixed up), you may subsequently burn the connected devices. If you decide to make the connection yourself, write to us the model of your computer and motherboard, and we will clarify the data specifically for your components.

The computer does not see the flash drive due to a non-working USB port

Problem: Sometimes problems with a flash drive are due to the fact that the USB port on the computer that is being used simply does not function. In this case, not only the flash drive, but also other USB devices will not work in a particular faulty port. The most common cause of a non-functioning USB port is a damaged contact. If all USB connectors on your computer are not functioning, they may be disabled in the Bios settings.

Solution: The solution to mechanical damage to contacts can only be repaired by a specialist who solders all damaged elements. It is not recommended to do this yourself.

USB ports that are disabled in Bios can be enabled using a simple setup. To begin, you need to go to Computer bios(when turning on, press the “F2”, “Del” or other key depending on the Bios version). Next, go to the “Advanced” --> “USB Configuration” section.

Make sure that the “USB Controller” field allows the use of USB ports and says “Enabled”. Don't forget to save the settings before exiting Bios.

Trivial contamination of the USB flash drive connector

Problem: Since a flash drive is in many situations carried in pockets or used as a key fob, over time plaque, dust and foreign debris accumulate in its connector. This happens extremely rarely, but a dirty USB connector can cause the computer to not read the flash drive. It will not be detected the first time, it will often freeze, or the reading speed will be greatly reduced.

Solution: To fix this problem, you need to clean the USB port of the flash drive from debris and dust. Removing plaque and oxidation from the connector may solve the problem.

The computer does not see the flash drive due to viruses

Problem: Very often, viruses cause problems in the operation of a flash drive. When trying to open an infected USB flash drive, the user receives the message “Access denied” or “Removable media not found.” Thus, access to the recorded data becomes limited.

Solution: To solve this problem, you need to delete the malicious file from the flash drive and scan it for viruses. Go to “Start” and enter “Show hidden files and folders” in the search bar and click on the search result.

Uncheck the box next to “Hide protected system files” and check the box next to “Show hidden files, folders and drives”.

After that, using Explorer, go to the flash drive and delete the malicious file “Autorun.inf”.

Drivers failing or using outdated drivers

Problem: There are often cases when the computer does not want to see the flash drive due to outdated drivers or a malfunctioning driver. For example, some older computers cannot handle flash drives larger than 32 GB. A driver failure can occur for various reasons. In any case, the problem with the drivers is solved by updating them.

Solution: Go to “Start” and enter “Device Manager” in the search bar, go to the found section.

We connect the flash drive to the computer and in the device manager go to the “USB Controllers” section. Right-click on “USB Mass Storage Device”, select “Properties” and click “Delete”.

Using these steps you will remove installed driver. We remove the flash drive from the computer and then connect it again. This will update the necessary driver.

If this method does not help you, you can try reinstalling the chipset drivers. They include drivers for all controllers. For this purpose you can use .

File system conflict

Problem: Quite often, the computer does not see the flash drive due to a file system conflict. So, if the computer uses the “NTFS” file system, and the flash drive uses “FAT32”, their incompatibility is possible. I would also like to describe a problem that Mac OS users may encounter. When formatting a flash drive in the Mac OS operating system, users most often choose the “Mac OS Extended” or “ExFAT” file system. Flash drives formatted in this way are very likely to become unreadable in Windows.

Solution: To solve the problem of file incompatibility, you need to format the flash drive. In order to find out what file system your computer has, go to “My Computer”, right-click on the hard drive and select “Properties”.

If you work on both Mac OS and Windows OS, then format the USB flash drive on your Mac in the “MS-DOS” file system. Then it will work fine on both operating systems.

The disk is not formatted

Problem: When a user inserts a flash drive into a computer and tries to open it, he sees a warning that the drive is not formatted and needs to be formatted before starting work. At the same time, the volume of employed and free space on the flash drive is indicated as zero. The recorded information cannot be accessed.

Solution: An effective solution in this case the formatting will become. Of course, before this you need to try connecting the flash drive to other computers and see the result. If the problem persists, then format the flash drive (we have already discussed how to do this above). If there is valuable information on the flash drive, when formatting, select “ Quick formatting" Then in the future it will be possible to recover deleted information using special programs.

The computer does not see the flash drive due to problems with the partition

Problem: In some cases, the operating system cannot properly mount the flash drive in the system. The flash drive icon does not appear and it is impossible to use it.

Solution: The problem is solved by forcing the partition letter to be specified. To do this, press the key combination “Win” + “R” and enter the simple command “diskmgmt.msc”.

In the manager that appears, we look for our USB device(next to the flash drive the partition letter will not be specified). Right-click on the removable device and select “Change drive letter.”

A small window will appear in which you need to enter the partition letter and click “Change”. Next, select a specific letter and click “OK”.

Conclusion

We examined in detail the reasons why a computer may not read a flash drive. The solutions described should help you cope with this unpleasant problem. In most cases, the unreadability of a flash drive is a reversible process, and only in the most advanced cases, problems with a flash drive are associated with fatal malfunctions of the device. If these tips didn’t help you, write in the comments, we’ll look for answers together.

A USB drive is a compact and convenient device for storing files. Like any equipment, it is subject to failures and breakdowns - both hardware and software. If the computer does not see the flash drive, you can usually solve the problem yourself. We list the possible reasons why a USB drive is not displayed or readable, and ways to solve them as quickly as possible.

When a flash drive is not detected, it is convenient to carry out initial diagnostics using a utility from Microsoft. All possible problems It won’t solve it, but it can eliminate common errors.

Download from the official website and run if your drive is not recognized. The utility is suitable for Windows 7 – 10.

USB ports

If the utility does not find out why the computer does not see the inserted flash drive, proceed to check it yourself. Start with the USB ports - they may be faulty or not turned on. If you inserted the drive into the port on the front panel of the system unit, move it back or try the adjacent slot. At the same time, check the contacts of the USB connector of the flash drive - if small debris gets on them, the device cannot be read on the computer. Clean the dust with a toothpick and wipe the contacts with a cotton swab dipped in alcohol.

If the laptop does not see the flash drive, the reason may be that the power supply is insufficient. When too much equipment is connected to the PC via USB - a mouse, keyboard, removable hard drive, a smartphone on recharge - there is not enough power for everything, and the system does not recognize the next device. In this case, simply disconnect unnecessary devices and reinsert the drive.

If the computer does not recognize the flash drive and other USB devices in any of the ports, USB is disabled in the BIOS settings. To access changing them, restart your PC and press the keys to enter the BIOS when booting.

The required combination will be written on the screen, usually F2. In the BIOS, go to the “Advanced” tab, click on “USB Configuration”. In the “USB Controller” item, set the value to “Enables”. Press F10 to save the settings and exit.

Viruses

When a flash drive is detected but cannot be read, it is worth checking it for viruses. If you recently inserted a drive into someone else's computer or laptop, it could be hosting a virus. Then the system will connect your USB device, and when you try to copy files, it will display the error “Application not found” or “Access denied.”

So that the antivirus receives full access to the drive, check if there is an autorun file on it that has been replaced by a virus. To do this, open the flash drive in Explorer; the show Hidden Items option must be enabled for all items to be visible.

The option is enabled in the top panel of Explorer or in the folder options. If you find a virus file called autorun.inf, delete it immediately, then run an antivirus scan.

Drivers

If your computer no longer sees the flash drive, but in other PCs it is detected just fine, look into the drivers. Open "Device Manager" through the properties of the "My Computer" shortcut. In the list of USB controllers, find the flash drive - if there is a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark next to it, right-click on the name and select “Delete device”. Remove the drive from the computer connector and insert it, the drivers will be reinstalled.

If this did not work, download and install new USB drivers from the website of the computer or laptop motherboard manufacturer. If you don’t see the USB device in the manager, take it out and reinsert it, and the required line will disappear from the list and appear.

Sometimes a driver conflict occurs - when the system tries to use a driver for another similar storage device for your drive, so the computer does not see the flash drive. What can you do in such a situation? Information about previously connected USB devices should be removed from the OS. Programs and DriveCleanup that are compatible with Windows 7 – 10 can do this.

USBOblivion will clean the registry and remove USB mount points. After it finishes working, restart your computer and check if the system can recognize the flash drive.

Partition conflict

Sometimes the computer detects the flash drive, but incorrectly. In this case, you hear the usual sound of turning on the USB drive, an alert pops up and a tray icon appears, but you cannot use the device. The computer does not recognize the removable drive because the OS assigned it the wrong partition letter, which is already occupied by other equipment. There is an address conflict and the flash drive does not work.

What to do in such a situation? If the computer does not see the flash drive, open the Disk Management utility. To quickly find it, hold down Win + R and enter diskmgmt.msc. In the list of disks, pay attention to the “Status” parameter desired device. If it says “Good”, right-click on it, in the menu click on “Make partition active” - if the item is available.

To give the partition the correct character, select "Change drive letter...". In the new window, allow access to the device and click “Change”. From the list of letters of the English alphabet, indicate any one to assign to the section. Just make sure which letters are already used to name devices and do not use the first A, B, C, D, by default they are intended for floppy disks and partitions hard drive.

If the “Status” field says “Unknown,” then the flash drive has stopped working due to damage. Try to recover your data to save it.

Formatting

When you plug in a new removable drive into your PC, the system alerts you to the need to format it. The device volume is displayed as 0 MB, as if Windows 10 or 7 does not see the flash drive.

The formatting procedure is useful in case of file system conflicts. If your computer uses FAT32 and your USB device uses NTFS, it will be difficult to read the files. If the drive already contains data, find a PC with a similar file system and copy all the information to it.

On your computer, open File Explorer. Right-click on the flash drive and go to “Format” in the menu. In a new window, install the desired file system, check the “Fast” box at the bottom - this will not only speed up the process, but will also help you later restore the data if you were unable to copy it. After formatting, reconnect and test the device.

Features of Windows XP

If Windows XP is installed on your PC, sometimes the flash drive is not recognized due to lack of updates. SP2 lacks components for USB devices to work correctly, so update your system to SP3 and install the latest patches from Microsoft.

Open the properties of the “My Computer” icon; if you see Service Pack 2 in the OS information, allow automatic updates. Run Windows Update, wait for the installation of new system components.

Conclusion

We figured out what to do if your computer or laptop does not see the flash drive. There may be several reasons for the problem; sequentially check the most common ones from our list in order to eliminate them and use the drive.

A flash drive is an information storage device that connects to any PC via a USB interface. Quite often this device stops working normally. What should I do? Below will be discussed the most effective ways flash drive treatment and corrections of common errors when working with the device.

Follow all the steps sequentially - if the first method does not help, move on to the next one and so on.

What to do if the flash drive stops working

In the modern IT industry, the KISS principle is relevant in a narrow circle, meaning “Keep it simple!” Without special need, there is no need to edit the registry, use complex hardware methods for troubleshooting problems, or try to implement other procedures - you should start with the simplest steps.

1. Try connecting the flash drive to another PC, laptop or other device for communication via a USB interface. If the flash drive does not work, then with 100 percent probability we can say that this is the problem - and it is necessary to immediately go to utilities for restoring and fixing a flash drive.
2. If the flash drive works on another computer or is at least detected by Windows (but “Explorer” and “This/My Computer” do not appear), then you need to Troubleshoot problems with the OS or file system using the instructions below.

1. Disconnect the drive by removing it from the USB connector.
2. Shut down your PC by selecting the “Shut down” option.
3. Disable system unit from a 220V power supply, press the power button for 5 seconds – this will remove the residual charge on individual modules of the motherboard.
4. Connect your computer to power.
5. Turn it on, wait until it loads completely and insert the USB flash drive.
6. Try connecting it to a different connector, especially if remote front USBs were previously used for this task. The best option is the rear ports
7. Sometimes the cause of flash drive malfunctions is the assignment of system ID in the form of a letter, or disappearance this parameter at all, to fix an OS problem, use the Disk Management utility

Utilities for flash drive recovery

Be sure to check the flash drive through utility“USB Troubleshooter” from Microsoft – it is not included with the OS, but is available for download from the official portal here free and only works with OS W7 and higher.
It’s easy to use – run the program and click “Next”.

After which the software will try to find and fix typical problems with displaying the flash drive in the system.

If you hear a characteristic sound when connecting a device, but it does not appear in Explorer, then open Device Manager.

Often reading problem USB flash drives appears after update operating system– it is provoked by incorrect registry entries left after connecting physical storage media.

Searching for them manually takes quite a long time and is better take advantage special program for searching and clearing non-working keys in the registry.

Best suited for this Vit Registry Fix utility (free and does general search and cleanup) And utility USBOblivion (free and clears all data on previously connected flash drives from regedit).
Main advantages: The interface is intuitive and has Russian localization.
Download the program and run it automatic search, after its completion, start cleaning (after checking the boxes in the sections about saving all changed .reg keys in the archive, in order to “roll back” the operation if necessary).

Sometimes the flash drive does not work due to driver incompatibility for USB 2 and 3 versions. In this case, you need to download updated versions from the official website of the motherboard manufacturer.

Why doesn't it see the flash drive? If the PC does not accept any flash drives, then you need to completely reinstall all drivers for USB drives.

The easiest way to do this is through the “Device Manager” (hold Win + R and enter devmgmt.msc, click on “OK”). Find the “USB Controllers” section in the drop-down list and sequentially delete (right-click on the object, select “Delete”) the subsections USBHostController, GenericUSBHub and USB Root Hub, then update the current hardware configuration and restart the PC.

As an addition, run a full system scan.

1. Launch the registry (hold Win+R, enter regedit and confirm the action by clicking “OK”).
2. Right-click on the HKEY_CURRENT_USER section and select Find, then type Explorer in the search field. If the folder contains NoDrives, then you need to select and delete it (using the Delete button). In addition, in the same registry editor, search for the StorageDevicePolicies parameter (under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE section) and delete it (if present).

Sometimes all the above methods do not give any tangible result.

If the flash drive is identified in the system (at the level of identifying an unknown connected device), then you can try to restore normal work devices, formatting it in a special way using a third party HDD Low Level Format Tool utility .

In this case, working with the device occurs at the level of physical sectors, and not the file system (as with standard formatting), which guarantees:

1. Wiping bad sectors
2. Elimination of any software problems
3. Permanently deletes all data from the storage device.

The program is free and available for download from the official website. After installing and launching it, select the required drive, click Continue.

Find the Low-levelFormat tab and accept the operation by clicking on Formatthisdevice.
The duration of the procedure depends on the type of flash drive and its capacity, on modern PCs the process takes on average 30-60 minutes. Once completed, you should safely remove the device and restart your computer.

Today, the method of storing data on portable flash drives has gained quite a lot of popularity. And now all flash drive manufacturers are struggling to create the smallest in size and largest in memory capacity flash drives; Micro SD cards occupy the leading position in the minimum sizes.

Micro SD flash cards are currently the smallest data storage devices that have been put into mass production.

Due to their very fragile structure, these drives quite often become unusable due to physical damage or incorrect completion of work with such flash drives.

There are often cases when, after a short period of working with a card, it becomes unreadable or is not detected by devices at all, so you cannot rely on the long-term operation of such a drive. I advise you to use a Micro SD card as a space for work, and not for permanent storage of information. Although every day manufacturers of such SD cards are improving their durability, and are bringing them closer to the possibility of using them for permanent and long-term storage of information.

Reasons why the computer may not detect the Micro SD card:

· Hardware problem.

· Flash drive failure.

· Assigning an already assigned partition letter.

· File system conflict.

· Malicious programs in the operating system.

If your Micro SD card is no longer detected by your phone, camera or other device, then you need to remove it and insert it into your computer to diagnose, identify and fix the problem.

Let's move on to considering and eliminating the most common causes of malfunction of such a flash drive.

How to check if the Micro SD card is detected on the computer?

In order to understand whether your computer has detected your Micro SD card, you can use 2 methods.

First way. Open my computer and check the connection of the new partition. If you have new disk, then the flash drive was detected.

Second way. If nothing appears in Explorer, then it’s worth checking whether the computer has even detected that an SD card is connected to it. To do this, go to my computer, right-click on the computer and select “Manage” from the drop-down menu.

After which the Computer Management window will open, there is a menu on the left side. We need to select the “Disk Management” section.

In the displayed statistics, we can see all connected drives to the computer, determine their volume, or set the partition letter.

If you did not see your SD card in this list, then read the following reasons and their solutions.

Hardware problem

If you are trying to connect your SD card to your computer through an adapter or through a card reader, and nothing happens, you should first check that these pairing devices are working.

If you use a card reader to connect the card, then try inserting a known working Micro SD card into it, if a known working card is also not detected, in this case, check and reinstall the card reader drivers. If after all the attempts nothing has changed, then most likely the problem is in the card reader.

If you are using a laptop, then most likely you are trying to insert an SD card through an adapter, directly into the laptop's built-in card reader. If nothing happens when using this connection method, then I recommend checking the drivers for the built-in card reader first, and then checking the functionality of the adapter.

Drivers for card readers can be downloaded and installed from the manufacturers’ official websites; if you have a portable card reader that connects via a USB port, then download the drivers from the manufacturer’s website. If you use a laptop's built-in card reader, then you can download drivers from the official website of your laptop manufacturer.

In order to check whether the driver of your card reader is detected by the system, you need to open the “Device Manager”, to do this, press the key combination Win + R and in the “Run” line that opens, enter the command “devmgmt.msc”.

The Device Manager window will open in which you can see devices that do not have a driver installed. Such devices will be marked with a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark. If there are no such devices, then expand the “Portable Devices” section and make sure that the computer has detected the card reader itself in order to discard the option of a non-working device.

Flash drive failure

If you have checked the functionality of the above devices and are convinced that they are working properly, then it is worth checking the Micro SD card for physical damage, cracks, chips, deformation or damage to the outer layer, since such a flash drive consists of many small tracks, which are easy to scratch and tear.

Try connecting it to some device: smartphone, camera, etc. If the flash drive is not detected in any device, then most likely it is physically damaged and cannot be repaired. To contact service center You can only be motivated by the presence of important information on the map.

Assigning an already assigned partition letter

This type of problem occurs quite often. This happens when an SD card is connected to a computer, the system assigns it the same letter as the existing partition, because of this a conflict occurs and we do not see our flash drive in the list of computer disks.

In order to resolve this type of problem, open the “Computer Management” section described above.

After getting into the “Disk Management” section, we need to find our flash drive, focus on its volume, select a disk that matches the capacity of our Micro SD card. Right-click on it and select “Change drive letter or drive path...” from the drop-down menu.

A window will open in which we need to click the “Add” button.

In the window that opens, select the letter for this section and click “OK”.

Done, we have assigned a letter to our partition, now we check its presence in Explorer.

File system conflict

There are often cases when a flash drive is detected, but it cannot be opened. The reason for this may be a file system conflict or a damaged file system of the Micro SD card itself. If the data on the flash drive does not play any role for you, then you can try to format it into the NTFS file system.

To do this, right-click on the flash drive and select “Format” from the drop-down menu.

In the formatting window that opens, in the “ File system"select NTFS, set the Volume Label and click the "Start" button.

Thus, we formatted the Micro SD card into NTFS format, after which you can open it.

Malware in the operating system

When faced with the problem of identifying a Micro SD drive, you may not even suspect that all this may be to blame malware, so-called viruses that can block USB ports and prevent the computer from working with your memory card.

In this case, it would be best to conduct a full system scan with your antivirus program, or resort to free ones antivirus programs who can help you with this.

I will recommend one of these to you - Dr.Web CureIt!

The program is absolutely free and is intended only for scanning and finding virus programs and removing them.

To download this program, go to the official Dr.Web website at https://free.drweb.ru/cureit/

Download the program and start scanning.

When finished, remove all malware found and after restarting the computer, try connecting the Micro SD card again.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many reasons why your computer does not see the Micro SD card, so it is impossible to unambiguously answer the question “Why does my computer not see the memory card?”, since this can be caused by problems of various kinds. To avoid making mistakes and solve the problem, you should take turns following all the steps described in this article.

Also, do not forget that when formatting, all information from the flash drive will be deleted.

And I still advise you not to store important information on drives of this type, they most often fail due to their very fragile structure. Use this type of drive to directly work with files, saving them in more secure places.