Plugged in your USB Flash drive but Windows can’t see it?

13 May, 2007 at 2:01 pm by Phil Wiffen · Filed under Troubleshooting, Windows

You’ve probably run into a drive lettering conflict.

Possible Symptoms

  • At home, your PC sees your flash drive as drive letter E. (I’m using E as an example)
  • You go to work and plug in your USB stick, but it doesn’t show up.

The likely culprit

This is probably because your PC at work already has a Drive E assigned – Windows can’t have two drives with the same drive letter, so your Flash drive can’t be used. To use it, we need to change the drive letter assigned to the flash stick.

How to fix it

  1. Right click on My Computer.
  2. Click ‘Manage’.
  3. Click ‘Disk Management’ in the Left pane.
  4. Locate your flash stick in the right pane.
  5. Right click on it, and choose ‘Change Drive Letter and Paths…’.
  6. Click either Change or Add, and assign the drive a new letter. (I usually pick something high up the alphabet, like ‘R’)
  7. Ta-da! Your Flash drive should now appear :)

Did this help you at all? Any questions? Feel free to leave me a comment below!

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9 Comments »

  1. James Stewart said,

    21 February, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    Tried that first and still isn’t working. Any other suggestions?

  2. Phil Wiffen said,

    25 February, 2008 at 6:11 pm

    Hey James,

    Without knowing more about the scenario, I can only guess, but one possibility is that your IT department has disabled USB Mass Storage devices, or restricted access to only approved devices. Try checking with them to see :)

  3. CB said,

    15 November, 2008 at 2:49 pm

    Thank you this is exactly what was wrong and what I needed to do.

  4. Carol Holmes said,

    23 December, 2008 at 1:03 am

    Woohoo! I couldn’t find anything else about this. And I could not for the life of me imagine why Windows couldn’t see my device. But this worked! THANK YOU. :)

  5. Naked Chimp said,

    9 April, 2009 at 5:11 am

    Oh yeah, wish I read more posts like yours…ones that actually work. Thanks for the help

  6. Rastislav Hrdlicka said,

    30 October, 2009 at 10:19 am

    Hi
    I have same problem, if i plug in USB mass storage device in my computer windows cant see it. But also in Computer management -> My Computer/Manage/Disk Management. There are only 2 drives Disk0 (C:\) and CD-ROM drive (D:\). Windows detect my USB mass storage because there is icon that USB Mass Storage Device was added. In properties of USB mass Storage Device in section Device status shows everything is working properly and also in Device manager shows no problems. Any idea how to fix it ?

    Thanks

  7. Robin Cox said,

    18 November, 2009 at 5:01 pm

    Thanks Phil, worked like a charm, I even named it “R”.
    Cheers!

  8. Sara said,

    23 November, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    Thanks a lot for your easy to follow instructions – this worked great!

  9. mitch said,

    31 December, 2009 at 1:41 pm

    guys my USB works perfect with flash drives, but i have only one flash drive that the computer can’t see or recognize , i tried changing the letter and this stuff but nothing worked , wn i open My Computer , it can’t see it ”Removable Disk” that’s what i get , and in the “manage” it sees disk1 , but nothing in it …
    plz send feedback

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