USB flashdrive not accessible even after safe removal and reinserting

  • Thread starter Thread starter Margo Guda
  • Start date Start date
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Margo Guda

On my system I use a 4 port USB hub and various USB flashdrives, most of
which work fine. However my lexar 1GB drive has developed a problem;
it is detected and given a drive letter when I plug it in, but I cannot
access anything on it and in fact windows does not seem to recognize it
as a valid drive.
(I run XP professional with SP1 installed. My system is PIII 1.2 GHz
with 512MB RAM).
I opened device manager, and saw an exclamation mark next to this
drive's entry; it says the device has been prepared for unplugging but
has not been removed. (This is NOT the case! it has been removed and
reinserted a number of times). What can I do to remedy this problem?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Margo Guda.
 
Sometimes a flash drive works better when it's plugged directly into the
computer, instead of a hub. Also, depending on how many and what other
devices you have plugged into the hub, there may not be enough power or
bandwidth to run your flash drive.
 
Margo said:
On my system I use a 4 port USB hub and various USB flashdrives, most of
which work fine. However my lexar 1GB drive has developed a problem; it
is detected and given a drive letter when I plug it in, but I cannot
access anything on it and in fact windows does not seem to recognize it
as a valid drive.
(I run XP professional with SP1 installed. My system is PIII 1.2 GHz
with 512MB RAM).
I opened device manager, and saw an exclamation mark next to this
drive's entry; it says the device has been prepared for unplugging but
has not been removed. (This is NOT the case! it has been removed and
reinserted a number of times). What can I do to remedy this problem?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Margo Guda.
Click to expand...

The formatting of the Lexar 1GB drive might appear to be corrupt to
this particular computer. If there are any important files on this
drive and they are read from another computer, make a backup. Next,
return the Lexar to the computer that is having trouble working with
it and format the drive via Disk Management. This should also repeat
the enumeration for the Lexar for proper identification in the future.
 
I tried that, too (connecting directly to the computer). In fact, I
think after that didn't work and I removed it (using the safely remove
hardware gadget) the computer became confused about the flashdrive
still being on the machine. I'm not quite ready yet to reformat the disk
if there is another way to resolve this. Especially since this disk
usually serves as a second backup (for when all else fails) and in the
past I've had unpleasant surprises when I needed such a backup and found
that in the critical hour, it did not work. So, I want to know how to
get this one working without having to reformat it.

Margo Guda.
 
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