USB External Hard Drive, MP3 and Flash Drive issues

This is one of those common things that happens to a lot of people on a daily basis. You plug your flash drive, MP3 or external HD and it won't show up in "My Computer" or you need to "format the drive" before it can be used, but you need the data. Now what?

Before you do anything, let's see if your computer needs updates. Sometimes this can be the problem. Go ahead and do it now.

Checked to see if there is a new driver for your device. As there is way too many products out there, you will need to do a search yourself for the appropriate drivers. You can do a search for the manufacturer and model. Example "Kingston 67tg" or "Kingston 98td".

If you haven't done a virus scan in a while, do that now.

Try plugging device into another slot.

If your device isn't showing up after that:

1. Click "Start, "Run", then type in "compmgmt.msc" without quotations, then click on "OK".

2. A window will pop up. Look on the left and down a bit. See "Disk Management"? Go ahead and click on that.

3. Take a look and see if you can find your inactive drive.

4. Once you found it, right-click and choose "Change Drive Letter and Paths", then "Add", then "Assign the following drive letter", accept the letter that this chooses for you and then click "OK".

If for some reason you get an error and you're unable to select your drive in Disk Management, there's another road we can take.

1. Click "Start", "Control Panel", "System and Maintenance", "System", then "Device Manager".

2. From here click on "Disk Drives" and look for your "USB Device". Make SURE you know it's your external HD or USB device.

3. Right-click on appropriate device and choose "Uninstall" then "OK".

4. Restart your machine with the device still plugged in and Windows will load the appropriate drivers. If your device came with a disc you can install the drivers now.

One solution that worked for me was to create a new user profile.
When I plugged my flash drive in with the other profile, it came up right away! Telling me that a program was conflicting with my drive.
It turned out to be Daemon Tools. For you it might be a different program.

If nothing works, the device may be damaged or the data is corrupt.
Sorry to say, but it happens to the best of us.
Hopefully you can take the device back to where you bought it from, or take advantage of the warranty.

Hope this helped you out!