Formatted USB flash drive not showing up on computer
A member had a problem with one of his USB flash drives.
Something went wrong when he formatted it with a format program to turn the flash drive into a linux live drive.
As a result of this his USB flash drive no longer showed up in the "computer" folder. The USB flash drive did show up on the windows 7 Disk Management but it was grayed out and he could not format it via the Disk Management.
This tutorial will fix the problem by formatting it using diskpart.
WARNING: You will lose all data on the USB flash drive!
Step 1:
type "diskpart" in the windows search bar and open the program, preferably by right-clicking and selecting "Run as administrator".
Step 2:
Once you opened diskpart you will need to type in the following command: "list disk"
This will list all the Hard drives and USB flash drives connected to the computer.
Step 3:
Locate you USB flash drive by looking at the size of the drive in the list, make sure you remember the Disk number. In my case it's a 32GB flash drive, so mine is the 29GB drive listed as "Disk 8"
WARNING: Don't continue to step 4 unless you are 100% sure that you have the right drive or you will clean the wrong drive!
Step 4:
Select the troubled USB flash drive by typing the command: "select disk (insert the drive number here without brackets)"
In my example it is Disk 8.
Step 5:
Now you must clean the drive by giving the "clean" command.
Step 6:
Next thing you need to do is create a partition with the command "create partition primary"
Step 7:
Now you need to select the partition you just created by giving the following command: "select partition 1"
Step 8:
Last step, you need to format the flash drive with the following command: "format fs=ntfs label=USB quick"
Victory:
You can close diskpart.
The drive will now show up on your computer listed as USB formatted with the NTFS file system.
Credit for the above steps goes to:
http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/12285-how-to-format-usb-flash-drive-not-showing-up-on-computer/ .
I have one more step to add:
Try going to control panel>administrative tools>computer management>disc management>then choose explore on the device if it shows up there. All devices should be there that were not officially recognised and show up in my computer. It may also not show up if the letter of the drive is the same as another. Change the drive letter to another one for the USB from here also.
Refresh and the flash drive should appear in My Computer.
