How to Fix a Flash Drive for a Computer, TV or Car Audio in 2019 🛠️👨‍💻🤔
Channel: Hetman Software: Data Recovery for Windows
Date: 2017-02-08

👍 Watch what do to if your flash drive doesn’t work.  As practice shows, there are a number of factors to cause this probelm.  For example, everything works fine with the PC, but other devices (a TV, car audio, digital camera, dashboard camera etc) can’t see your flash drive, or the drive is infected with viruses and so on.

Read: How To Repair a USB Flash Drive - https://hetmanrecovery.com/recovery_news/how-to-repair-usb-flash-drive.htm

Content:
0:00 - Intro;
0:56 - Incompatible flash drive format
2:06 - Too much memory on the USB stick
5:04 - The USB port is malfunctioning or is a service port

In my previous video, “How to Fix Flash Drive Errors,” I have told you about other issues related to problems with a USB drive, a memory card or an external hard disk.   

Let us begin with a situation when your flash drive works perfectly with a computer, but you encounter problems when it is connected to other devices such as a TV, car audio etc. For example, a device can’t see your flash drive.

The first possible cause is the drive’s incompatible format. Most devices support only FAT file system (FAT16, FAT32 or exFAT - which is rare). So if your drive is an NTFS one, all your attempts to connect it to a device will go down the drain. The solution is quite simple. All you need is to connect the drive to a computer and format it in FAT file system (if there is any important data on the drive, copy it to the computer). AFter that, go to the Explorer, right-click on the flash drive and click on “Format.” Then select the necessary file system (for example, FAT32), choose “Quick format” and click “Start.” You will see a warning that all data will be deleted. Click OK and wait for the process to finish.  As you do that, copy the files you need to the flash drive and reconnect it to the device.

The other possible cause is the excessive memory size of the flash drive. Almost all devices have a limit on the maximal size of the drive memory they can work with (it varies depending on a certain device type - 4, 8 or 16 Gb). If your drive’s memory size is larger than this figure, the device won’t be able to see such drive. In this case, you can connect a drive with a smaller memory size. If you can’t do that, create a partition with a size suitable for your device on this, bigger, flash drive. To do it, go to the Command Prompt as an administrator, enter the command "Diskpart" and then "list disk". Now we can see the list of all disks connected to this computer. My flash drive is marked as Disk 5. Before you continue, make sure your flash drive contais no important data - it will be deleted. After that, enter the command “select disk 5” (check the number carefully or you can erase the wrong disk) and then enter the command “clean.” Then enter “create partition primary” (that is, you are creating a partition) and specify its size in megabytes (for example, 2000 Mb) using the command “size=2000.” Enter “select partition 1” (you select this partition), then format the drive in the format you need (for example, in FAT32) with the command “format fs=fat32 quick,” assign a drive letter by entering “assign letter=X” (you can choose any other letter which is not assigned already) and finish the work of “Diskpart” with the command “exit.” After that, close the command prompt and now you can see that my 16 Gb flash drive has only 2 Gb now.  All you need now is to copy the files to the flash drive and reconnect it to the device. 

The third possible cause is that the USB port of the TV, car audio etc can have operability problems or can be a service port (if there are several USB ports in your device). In this case, try connecting the flash drive to another port or visit a repair shop. 

Another cause of possible problems with a flash drive can be about viruses. For example, there is no problem with listening to music with your car audio or watching films on TV when your flash drive is connected, but your computer’s antivirus flashes a warning that the drive is infected; another possible variant is that files are not displayed or your computer can’t see this drive at all.  In my case, the computer can see that the drive contains some data, but it cannot display it. This problem can be solved by cleaning the viruses with special antiviral software (Kaspersky, DrWeb and so on), or clean the drive’s partition table with the command “clean” and the “diskpart” tool as I have shown before.

After all, a flash drive can be out of order because of various physical problems both in the drive itself or in this particular computer that the drive is connecetd to. For example, one of the ports in your computer is out of order (in case with desktops, it happens to front panel USB ports very often).  In this case, try connecting the flash drive to another port or another computer.

Other videos: #NotWorkFlashDrive, #CarRadio, #TV, #Camera, #VideoPressure, #VideoRecorder.