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ThisWreckage

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12 Posts

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April 26th, 2024 12:47

USB flash drives stop functioning completely

Dell Inspiron 3020, Windows 10. USB flash drives are stopping working completely, even new ones. For example, I was using a 128GB Kingston flash drive; after 8 months of use it stopped being recognised by Windows File Explorer or any other method of accessing it. I contacted Kingston who diagnosed a failed drive and sent me a replacement. I inserted it into a USB port on my PC; it was recognised in File Explorer. To speed file transfer, I accessed Device Properties to change its Policy to 'Better Performance - Enable Write Caching' as I have used this many times before. On clicking OK, the system hung and even Task Manager - End Task refused to work. I had no choice but to remove the flash drive. On reinserting it, File Explorer wouldn't recognise it.

I used Powershell to try to reformat the drive with no success. I tried to upload a screenshot but it won't appear when I posted this question. Clear-disk returns an error of 'There is no media in the device'. AOMEI Partition Manager doesn't see it. This is a brand new flash drive.

This is the latest in several SD cards and flash drives that have stopped functioning completely. Am I doing something to cause this or is there a fault on my PC? I've never had similar problems with previous computers.

RoHe

10 Elder

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43.6K Posts

April 27th, 2024 00:33

Do USB mouse and keyboard still work, even though the USB stick isn't recognized?

Is this USB stick still recognized and read/writable on another PC?

FWIW, I wouldn't recommend enabling write caching on USB drives.  If you accidentally unplug it or Windows crashes before the cache is written to the USB, data will be lost and the drive could get corrupted.

For starters, reboot and tap F12 when you see the Dell screen. When the menu opens, select option to run Diagnostics. Run all of them and copy error messages, if any. This can take a long time. (NOTE: do this without any USB storage devices plugged in.)

Assuming no hardware errors detected, run these commands, in order:

  1. At desktop, open a CMD prompt window, be sure to use Run as administrator option
  2. At the prompt, type in: chkdsk c: /r and press Enter. Accept offer to run chkdsk at next boot and reboot. chkdsk will run before Windows loads so be patient. When PC is back at desktop, open the chkdsk log to see if there are any "unfixed" errors.
  3. Assuming no unfixed chkdsk errors, open CMD again, as in #1.
  4. At the prompt, type in: DISM.exe /Online /Cleanup-image /Restorehealth and press Enter. Be sure to include a space in front of each / and note error messages when done.
  5.  Assuming no "unfixed" errors in #4, at the CMD prompt, type in: sfc /scannow and press Enter. Be sure to include a space in front of the / and note errors when done.
  6. Assuming no "unfixed" errors in any of above, reboot PC and see if that fixes the problem with USB sticks.
  7.  If problem persists, open Device Manager and click View>Show hidden. Then search everywhere in DM for any "Unknown" devices. Right-click and uninstall all Unknowns.  Then click Action>Scan for hardware changes. When done, reboot PC and test USB drive(s) again.

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