Flash Drive Not Showing Up Mac

There are five main reasons why the USB drive is not showing up on Mac: The USB drive is dragged to other places. When you plug your flash drive into the computer, you accidentally dragged it to somewhere else. You eject the drive wrongly. Finder is the other access for us to check a connected external drive on Mac. If your flash drive or external hard drive is not showing up there, go to Finder Preferences Sidebar, and under Locations, you need to tick the option 'External disks'. Now, let's see how to format the USN flash drive not showing up on Mac. Step 1 Plug your USB flash drive to Mac, and launch Disk Utility meanwhile. Step 2 Click the USB flash drive in the left sidebar, and choose 'Erase' on the right panel.

Summary: Have you ever come across USB drive detected but not accessible problem? If ‘Yes’ then do not worry about it, just like I have provided solutions on how to fix/remove “Read Only” error of USB, SD card & hard drive – similarly, in this post, I am providing very effective solutions on how to fix USB drive detected but not accessible issue on Windows and Mac. Just go through the solutions mentioned below.

But before you proceed further to fix not accessible USB drive, you must first use USB drive data recovery software, to recover and keep backup of files – just to avoid data loss.

With the help of USB Drive Data recovery software, you can:

  • Retrieve photos, videos and audio files from inaccessible USB drive
  • Also restore digital media files from inaccessible SD card, flash drive, & external hard disk
  • Preview recoverable files within the software before final recovery
  • 100% read-only program, safe, risk free and secure to use


* Free version of the program only scans and previews recoverable objects.

USB drive detected but not accessible is a common problem particularly with new USB drive. However, you may also encounter the same issue with external storage devices such as hard drives, memory cards, pen drives, memory stick or flash drives. Due to this problem, whenever we connect external storage device with PC, it gets detected easily, but it doesn’t allow us to access files or data stored within it.

Fortunately, this problem can be solved by following the below solutions. It is suggested that you must follow the solution one by one and check if your problem is fixed or not.

Solutions To Solve USB Drive Detected But Not Accessible Issue

So, if you are encountering the same issue in which your USB drive is detected but not showing or inaccessible in “My Computer”, then you can follow below-mentioned troubleshooting to fix this issue on Windows 10/8/7.

1. General Troubleshooting – Check USB Port

Before, you try any other technical solution, you must first check the USB port on your computer. Try to plug your USB in another USB port of your PC – if it works on another port then, the first USB port might be dead. If you are using a USB hub, then connect the drive directly and see if it is working or not – it is because some of the USB hubs are not able to provide enough power supply to function external drive.

If still, the drive doesn’t show up in “My Computer”, then connect it to another PC’s USB port, just to check whether the drive itself has got bad or corrupt or your PC has certain problems. You must check your drive appear in the computer’s Disk Management window. If it does not show up then you might be using a dead drive that needs replacement.

2. Does your USB drive appears in My Computer

When you say USB detected but not accessible, then does it means that drive not allowing to access data stored within it or the drive detected but it is not showing up in My Computer.

When you said USB detected but not accessible, do you mean the pen drive not showing data or the pen drive detected but not showing in My Computer?

(i) If USB drive detected but you are not able to access it

If this is the case that your USB is recognized by computer, but you are not able to open files and folders stored within it, then it is recommended that you must use USB Drive Data Recovery famous as photo recovery software. It is capable enough to restore inaccessible files from USB, external hard drive, memory cards that gets detected but not accessible.


* Free version of the program only scans and previews recoverable objects.

This Digital Media Recovery tool, will help you to restore almost all files format of photos, videos and audio. This also restore files from write protected USB, locked memory cards, virus infected and corrupted USB flash drive. So, download this USB drive recovery software and get back inaccessible data.

(ii) If USB drive detected but not showing up in My Computer

This is what you should do, if your drive is detected but not showing in My Computer. Check if it appears in Disk Management.

Does not have any idea how to do it? Check below steps:

  • To open Disk Management, click Start and type diskmgmt.msc in the search bar and hit ENTER.
  • Now, Disk Management will get open, here you can check whether your USB is showing up or not.

3. Does your USB drive show up in Disk Management?

(i) If USB drive show up in Disk Management

Flash Drive Not Showing Up Mac

If your USB appear in Disk Management but it is not accessible, then it means that drive got corrupted or there is error in the disk.

In this case, follow the below steps to fix this problem:

  • Click Start> type msc in search bar and hit ENTER.
  • This will open Computer Management.
  • Now click on “Disk Management” located on the left hand menu.
  • In the Disk Management option, you can see the list of hard drive, this will also display your USB drive. Now right click on your USB drive and select “Change Drive letter and paths”.
  • A small window will pop-up. Click on “change” and assign a new drive letter name to your USB. Always remember that you must assign the name which is not being used by any other drive.

That’s All!

Once drive letter name changed, your USB drive will show up in My Computer and you will able to access data from it. If not then reboot your system and then check.

In major cases, this solution have seems to work great. However, if your USB does not appear even after following the above steps then it is suggested that you must use USB drive file recovery software as mentioned above to recover files from USB drive and after recovery you can proceed further to format or repair the drive.

(ii) If USB drive doesn’t show up in Disk Management

If your USB drive is detected but it doesn’t appear in Disk Management, then you can need to update the driver software. Below follow the steps to do this.

  • Go to “My Computer” and click on “System Properties” and then on Device Manager located on left pane.
  • Device Manager window will get open. Now, next to “USB controller” click on the Plus (+)
  • You will see a yellow exclamation mark. Right click and select “update driver software” and choose “automatically search for driver software online“.

Simply wait and let driver to get installed on your PC. Once the driver get installed, reboot your computer and then reconnect your USB and see whether you are able to access files stored within it.

Now let’s know the solutions on how to fix USB drive detected but not accessible on Mac.

Solution To Fix USB Drive Detected But Not Accessible on Mac

You can make use of Disk utility feature to fix USB drive detected but not accessible on Mac.

Here follow the steps:

  • Open Disk Utility by opening Spotlight (cmd+space-bar) and type Disk Utility and hit ENTER. Search in the list on the left and see if the USB drive appears there.
  • If there is USB drive in Disk utility, then check underneath for a Volume. If it is available there, then click on it and select Mount. If your Mac has already mounted it then you will see unmount option instead.
  • If Volume is not listed there, then it means that your Mac is not able to access drive. You will see that Mount option is greyed out.
  • Here you will have three options – First Aid, Erase and Restore. Click on “First Aid” option to check for errors and then repair the drive if required. If first aid detects any errors, then you can easily fix it by yourself by clicking on “Repair Disk” option.
  • If your Mac not able to repair the drive then it is likely that your USB drive is completely damaged or broken or drive is formatted using a file system that Mac cannot read.
  • If you want to restore data from USB drive such as pictures, videos or audio files, then you can use Photo Recovery software which is a suitable USB drive data Recovery for Mac. But, if you do not want to restore data then you can simply click on Erase option to erase all data and your Mac will reformat your USB drive.

Some people also ask – how to fix flash drive not showing up on Mac?

Usb Flash Drive Not Showing Up Mac

Below find out the solution!

How To Fix Flash Drive Not Showing Up on Mac?

Usb Not Recognized Mac

Well, in such a situation where your USB flash drive does not show up on your Mac computer, then you must consider to follow below solutions:

Check your Mac is set to show mounted flash drive on the desktop. Open Finder > Preferences > General and see that there is a tick beside external drive. If it is not ticked mark then tick mark it.

Make sure the flash drive is connected properly on your Mac. Also make sure that USB port is working and not damaged. Try plugging the drive to another USB port. If you have only one port, then plug another device and see if it works fine. Try to connect your drive to another Mac and see if you are able to access the drive on that Mac.

Conclusion

Flash Drive Not Showing Up Windows 10

After going through the above solutions mentioned to fix USB drive detected but not accessible error, you will be easily able to fix this issue if you apply so. However, apart from this, if you ever find that the data from USB drive has been lost then you can try USB Drive Data Recovery Tool. This is the best option you can try to recover deleted data from USB flash drive.

Flash Drive Not Showing Up Mac


Alex is an expert technical writer with 7+ years of experience. His in-depth knowledge about data recovery and fascination to explore new DIY tools & technologies have helped many. Alex has a great interest in photography and loves to share photography tips and tricks with others.

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