[Fixed] USB Not Showing up in Windows 11 File Explorer
USB flash drives are a great way to store data quickly on the move. That is why we often store our important work, college projects, and other important data on these USB flash drives. But what if one fine day the USB doesn’t show up on your Windows 11 computer? Stuff of nightmare! But don’t worry, we are here to provide a solution which will help you get your files back.
Why doesn’t the USB drive show up?
Well, there can be multiple reasons for this erratic behavior depending on two scenarios. First, The USB is partitioned with a file system that is not supported by Windows, such as Apple’s APFS or Linux Ext. In this case, the USB drive is shown in the Disk Management utility but not in the File Explorer. The second case is that the USB drive is broken or damaged, where the USB doesn’t show up in either the File Explorer or Disk Management utility. We will first show you how you can tell which scenario you are facing, and then we will help you find a solution.
How to check if USB is shown in Disk Management
To find out if your problem fits in the first or the second scenario as discussed above, you need to check whether the USB is shown in the Disk Management utility. Here’s how you can check it:
- Click on the Search icon on the taskbar, then type “Disk Management” (without the quotes). Once you see Create and format hard disk partitions pop-up in the search results, click on Open.
2. This should open the Disk Management utility. Check if you are able to view the USB drive in this utility, and then go over to the respective section to find a solution. It should show up as a Removable Drive as seen below.
USB Not showing up in File Explorer but Showing in Disk Management
The USB drive being shown in the Disk Management utility indicates that Windows 11 is able to detect it. So, some of the possible reasons for it not being shown in File Explorer can be issues with the USB driver, there can be a drive letter conflict with another drive, or it can be a file system error.
In my example, my 64GB Lexar USB flash drive is not seen in Windows 11 File explorer as you can see from the screenshot. Unsurprisingly, it does show up in Disk Management tool.
According to my test, a quick fix is to delete the volume in USB drive and create a new simple volume. Please backup the drive first.
Launch Disk Management utility and right click the USB drive. From the pop-up menu, click on the Delete Volume button. This will remove all the files and partition information from the USB.
After that, the drive will be assigned a new name called New Simple Volume. Now, right click on the USB drive again and select New Simple Volume. This will open up a new setup wizard and format the drive to a proper format.
Once it is done, the USB drive is given to a new name (New Volume)and you are able to see the USB drive in File Explorer.
If the above does not work, then you need to update the USB driver by following the steps in the following part. In this case, it is 32 GB HP USB drive.
The first thing we will do is to update the drivers for the USB drive. This helps when the USB drive is shown as unallocated space in the Disk Management utility. To do this, you need to insert the USB flash drive, click on the Search icon on the taskbar, and search for Device Manager. Once it shows in the search results, click Open.
In the Device Manager click on Disk drives, that will list all the drives in your computer. From there, right click on the USB drive, and then click on Update Driver.
That should open the Driver Update wizard window, here you need to click on Automatically search for driver software online. Now you need to wait till the drivers are updated, and once done, you can restart your computer and check once again if you are able to view your USB drive. If not, then move to the next step.
Next, we will try to reinstall the USB drivers instead of updating them. For this, follow steps 1, and 2, and then instead of click on Update Driver, click on Uninstall Driver.
You’ll be asked to confirm the action. Click on OK and wait till the drivers are uninstalled. Once done, restart your computer and insert your USB drive in your computer. It will install the drivers automatically. Now check if it is showing up in File Explorer, if not, then move to the next step.
Now we will try to create partitions for USB drive. Open up Disk Management as shown previously, and then right click on the USB drive that is being shown as unallocated space. From the menu that pops-up, click on New Simple Volume. This should bring up the New Simple Volume Wizard.
Follow the instructions given in the wizard and then restart your computer. Your USB flash drive should show up by now in File Explorer.
If the drive letter for your USB drive is the same as one of the other drive letters of your Windows 11 computer’s hard disk partition, then it might cause the USB drive to not show up in File Explorer. In that case, go over to Disk Management once again, right click on the USB drive partition, then click on Change Drive Letter and Paths.
In the window the opens up, click Change, allocate a new drive letter to your USB drive, then click OK to confirm. Once again restart your computer and check if the USB drive is being shown.
If your problem is still not resolved, it can be an issue with the file system of the USB drive. In these cases, the USB drive is usually shown as RAW, there are file system errors, and the drive becomes inaccessible. For that, you need to format the drive into NTFS or FAT32 format. However, you should note that formatting the USB drive will delete all data within the drive. So, we would suggest you to use any data recovery software to take a backup of the driver first.
Once you have taken a backup of the data, go back to Disk Management, right click on the USB drive, and click on Format.
Select the File Type as either NTFS or FAT32, leave the rest of the settings as is, and proceed to format the USB drive. After this, the USB drive should show up in File Explorer as a blank drive.
USB drive Not Showing up in File Explorer and Disk Management Tool
If the USB drive doesn’t show up in Disk Management utility either, then it is either a driver issue, or the USB port itself is damaged. In the worst-case scenario, the USB drive itself is physically damaged. Here are a couple of things you can do to fix the problem:
First, update or reinstall the USB drivers by followings steps 1 through 5 from the previous section.
In case the USB port is damaged, or the USB flash drive itself is damaged, we would suggest you to send the computer or the USB drive for repair.
Just so that you know, there are multiple ways to access Disk Management and Device Manager. We have listed only one of them here which is the easiest.
But if for some reason you are unable to access these utilities following the above methods, you can search on the internet for other methods to access them and then follow the rest of the process from here. We hope your USB problem on your Windows 11 computer is solved by following some of the above steps.
