One of the main reasons why drives fail to mount is if the drive isn’t receiving enough power. If the drive is powered via a USB-A cable you need to check that adequate power is being delivered. Open File Explorer Right click on This PC and select Map network drive OR On the Computer tab, click the Map network drive icon Select the Drive letter (the default is Z:).

1. G Drive Not Mounting On Mac
2. G Drive External Hard Drive Not Mounting

A USB drive not showing up in Windows is one of the commonest issues related to external storage devices. USB drive not showing up in Windows may result from various causes. We will show you the symptoms, causes and corresponding fixes for the issue and provide you the useful way to recover data from your USB drive with EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard.

USB Drive Not Showing Up in Windows

'I’ve tried all the methods I can think of to connect this USB flash drive to my PC, but my computer still does not show up any signals of the drive. All of my projects from this semester are stored on the drive, how can I get to my files?!”

Many users, including you now, have found their USB flash drive or external hard drive not showing up on their Windows PC. Before indicating the possible reasons for this issue, I'd like to know what your specific situation is. Generally, when you say your USB drive is showing up, you mean it disappears from File Explorer. Is your USB drive not showing up in Windows File Explorer but can be seen in Disk Management? Or Is it missing from both Windows File Explorer and Disk Management? To make it clear, go to 'This PC' > 'Manage' > 'Disk Management' and check whether your USB drive shows up. Specify your situation and choose the corresponding tips to follow:

Since there are many reasons why a USB will not be detected by a PC, we offer a number of solutions. Follow these methods and get your missing USB drive back without losing any data. If you are a Mac user, having the same problem, follow this page to fix USB flash drive not showing up on Mac with ease.

Fixes for USB Drive Not Showing Up in Windows 10 File Explorer Only

If your USB drive shows up in Disk Management, it means Windows can still detect your drive. But due to some reasons, the USB cannot show up in File Explorer as expected. The reasons are:

• USB driver issues
• Drive letter conflicts
• File system errors

The solutions vary based on the causes but all detailed below. Follow to fix your problematic USB with ease.

Situation 1. USB Drive Not Showing Up Due to USB Driver Issues

If there is something wrong with your USB driver, the USB drive will not show up in Windows 10 File Explorer and may show up as unallocated space under Disk Management. When your USB flash drive or USB external hard drive is unallocated space because of driver errors, follow the methods below to make it usable again.

Method 1. Update USB Drive Driver

Step 1. Connect the USB flash drive or external hard drive to PC, right-click on 'This PC' (in Windows 10) and choose 'Properties'.

Step 2. Click 'Device Manager' then expand “Disk drives”. Find and right-click the problematic USB drive and select 'Update driver'

Step 3. Click 'automatically search for driver software online'.

Step 4. Wait for the driver to be updated, then reboot your computer. Afterward, you can try to reconnect your USB drive to PC and check whether the USB drive shows up or not.

This method can also be helpful in solving disk-related issues like 'The system cannot find the file specified'

Method 2. Reinstall Disk Driver for USB Drive to Make It Show Up on PC Again

Step 1. Right-click 'This PC' and choose 'Properties' > 'Devices Manager'.

Step 2. Click on 'Disk drives', right-click on your USB drive that is not showing up in Windows 10 and choose 'Uninstall device'. (Make sure you have selected the correct USB device.)

Step 3. In the prompt asking you to confirm the removal, click 'OK'. (Wait patiently and let the process finish. If it takes too long, you can remove the USB flash drive from the PC.)

Step 4. Restart your computer and reconnect the USB flash drive/external hard drive to the PC. After the computer restarts, the driver will be automatically installed.

Method 3. Recover Data and Create New Partitions

If your USB still won't show up in Windows 10 and show up as unallocated space in Disk Management after updating or reinstalling the driver, you are recommended to recover data from your USB drive and then create new partition to make it ready for data storage.

If the USB shows up in Disk Management, but you’re unable to open the drive. It is time to use recovery software to get back your data. To recover files from unallocated space, you can use the hard drive recovery software - EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. EaseUS data recovery software will help you recover files from your USB drive that shows up as unallocated effectively. It allows you to restore data from an inaccessible, RAW, or formatted USB drive and other storage devices with a few simple clicks. You can download it now and follow the guidance provided below to restore data from your USB flash drive easily.

Generally, unallocated space will show up as lost partition in EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard. Select the correct partition and then start the scanning process.

To recover data from the USB drive:

Step 1. Run USB data recovery software.

Connect the USB flash drive to your computer and launch EaseUS USB data recovery software on your PC. Select your USB drive which marks as a removable disk, and click 'Scan' to start finding your lost files.

Step 2. Scan all lost files from USB.

EaseUS Data Recovery Wizard will thoroughly scan your USB flash drive and find all your lost data on it. After the scanning process, use the Filter feature to filter a specific file type. You can check and preview found USB files in this program.

Step 3. Restore all lost files from USB.

A double-click will allow you to preview the file results. Choose the target files and click 'Recover' to save them to a secure location on your PC or other external storage devices.

After retrieving your precious file, now you can create new partitions on your storage device and make it usable again.

To create new partitions on the USB drive:

Step 1. Go to 'This PC', right-click it and choose 'Manage' > 'Disk Management'.

Step 2. Right-click the unallocated space and choose 'New Simple Volume'.

Step 3. Follow the wizard to finish the remaining process.

Now your USB drive should show up in Windows as usual. You can copy the files you recovered back to your USB according to your needs.

Situation 2. USB Not Showing Up in Windows Due to Drive Letter Conflicts

If the drive letter of your USB drive is the same as one of the drive letters of your computer hard disk partition, you won't be able to see it in Windows File Explorer. Besides, you will see the drive has no drive letter in Disk Management. Actually, it's quite simple to solve the problem in such a case. You only need to assign a new drive letter to your USB drive.

Step 1. Go to 'This PC', right-click it and choose 'Manage' > 'Disk Management'.

Step 2. Right-click the volume on your USB flash drive/external hard drive and select 'Change Drive Letter and Paths'.

Step 3. In the new window, click 'Change'.

Step 4. Assign a new drive letter to your USB and click 'OK'.

Situation 3. USB Not Showing Up in Windows Due to File System Errors

If your USB flash drive or external hard drive has file system errors, you will see your device show up as RAW and your device will become inaccessible. Here the file system error refers to an unsupported file system by Windows or damaged file system caused by misoperations or improper formatting. To repair hard drive with file system errors, the best way is to format the drive to convert RAW to NTFS or FAT32. By doing so, you assign a new file system to your device and then you can use it as you like.

But hold on.

When you format your USB drive, all data will be deleted. Since the USB drive shows up in Disk Management, you can use EaseUS data recovery software to get all of the data off the drive before you format it. The software also supports RAW device recovery. Thus, follow the article about how to recover data from RAW USB drive to rescue your data in advance.

After getting all data back, you need to format the USB drive to convert the file system back to NTFS or another Windows-compatible file system, which allows you to store data again.

Step 1. Right-click on the 'Start' icon > Type computer management > click on 'Computer Management'.

Step 2. Click 'Disk Management' in the bar on the left-hand side, then find the device in the drive viewer.

Step 3. Right-click on the USB flash drive, select 'Format' to directly format the USB drive to make it usable.

In order to avoid data loss trouble, it's highly recommended for you to perform USB data recovery to restore data from the RAW USB drive. But if you've already formatted, don't worry, this data recovery software can help you restore data before or after formatting the USB flash drive.

Fixes for USB Not Showing Up in Windows File Explorer and Disk Management

If your USB is not showing up in Windows File Explorer and Disk Management simultaneously, the reasons could be:

• USB driver issues
• USB port/cable error
• Physical corruptions of USB

Follow to fix your problematic USB with ease.

Situation 1. Driver Issues

Whether the USB drive shows up in Disk Management or not, the USB not showing up issue caused by problematic device drivers can be potentially solved by updating or reinstalling the USB driver. For the detailed steps, you can refer to the first two methods in the last part.

Situation 2. USB Connection Failure

G Drive Not Mounting On Mac

Connection failure may be the root cause. It's a hardware problem that you can easily identify by checking the USB connection. Generally, there is more than one USB port on your computer. Try other ones on the same computer, switch from the front USB ports to the rear USB ports, or connect your USB drive to another computer and check whether the problem remains. Similarly, you can also change another USB cable if you are using an external hard drive.

Situation 3. Physical Corruptions

If the tips above fail to fix your USB drive that is not showing up in Windows, it's highly likely there is physical damage or corruption on your USB flash drive or external hard drive. This is the toughest situation and the only suggestion for you is to send the USB drive for manual repair.

The Bottom Line

G Drive External Hard Drive Not Mounting

When a USB flash drive does not show up on your Windows PC, it means that the computer has failed to read the USB drive. Therefore, in order to get a USB drive to show up, we must make the USB readable again. There are many methods for you to make an unrecognized USB drive to show up on PC: update USB flash driver, change drive letter, use Windows’s built-in disk management tool to detect the USB and more. Hope one of them can be helpful to fix your USB drive.