Here's Why USB Drives Disappear in Windows Sometimes (+ How to Fix)

NOTE: Most thumb drives these days are probably best formatted as "exFAT", because FAT32 only supported up to 4GB file sizes. UNLESS you want absolutely maximum compatibility on really old computers (~2010 and earlier OS's like Mac OSX 10.6 or Windows XP). In this demo it didn't offer me exFAT as an option because the drive was too small. So shout out to my absolutely ancient 247 MB thumb drive, still going strong after like 15 years.

Me : Plugs in a usb Windows : Im gonna pretend I didnt detect that.

I've had that happen a lot. But what makes it work is I just close and re-open, or click on the refresh icon. And it does work most of the time.

The bigger question is, where did you find a 250MB drive at? You can also see the drives that have been plugged in through device manager.

I've been searching for a resolution to this issue i've had for a few days with no clear idea - most places were attempting to get me to download programs ect, this was so simple and straightforward thank you!

WOW! This just validated the way I have gone about all of this to get the thumb drive recognized. Thanks.

ThioJoe doesn't agree Terms and Conditions with Windows. Windows agrees with him.

Thank You for all of your videos that you did. I am enjoying all of them

Thanks, Joe. And nice update to old XP wallpaper.

Thank you so much!!! Just what i was looking for this fixed my corrupted USB which kept crashing my computer when i tried to Access it. After watching many videos all about diskpart and failing, i finally found something helpful, thank you. Keep up the good work👍!

Thanks, ThioJoe, You just solved a major headache for me, after weeks of searches and attempts I came across your video and what I had been looking for, What it is I bought a new flash drive and I did add on some information then when I went to use it all I got was the sound like you said but no reaction from the drive, I did as you said and one of your recommendations did the trick, it was not about the cost of the new flash drive but not being able to use it within such a short time span after purchasing it, Thanks for the great information.

Dude you are my #1 digital savior! You do great work! Thank you!

I know this but I still watched this all the way through cause you're the man

Great troubleshooting video! Thanks!

There's a 5th reason. If you have a USB hdd plugged into a desktop on a home network and that USB drive is shared on the network and if let's say a laptop on the same network has that USB hdd "mapped as a network drive" as in it's assigned a drive letter but it's being accessed through the network, then if you physically remove the USB drive from the desktop and plug it directly into the laptop, that will confuse the bejeezus out of windows. Often the drive will not be accessible until the mapped network drive is "disconnected" and then the USB drive will need unplugged and then plugged back in. Sometimes you will need to disconnect the mapped network drive and then restart the PC before it will accept the USB drive plugged directly into it.

1:38 - To get to Disk Management you could also right click the Start button then click 'Disk Management'.

this was super helpful, thank you!

Thank you. One of your more useful videos for me anyways. I feel like gathering up all my old usb's and seeing what I can do. I have a few old external HD's too that i think I might be able to get going again. thanks.

Thank you Theo Joe for making this video it helped me a lot I had tried to upload a new operating system onto my drive D and somehow screwed it up an lossed access to the drive your tutorial here help me fix that and now the driver's back so thank you so much.

AAAAHHHH, I needed this video but I can't find my thumbstick!!!! the frustration is off limits!!! cool video tho