Flash Drive has no drive letter... Not in Disk Management

[mattperry]

Hi guys,

Im hoping someone will be able to help me here...

I recently fresh installed my Vista Premium x86 on my homebuilt, and I had
all my data backed up on my flash. When I plug it in, Vista dings like
normal, but it is not in Windows Explorer and Disk Management. The Drive did
have some Code 10 Device Cannot Start problems, but those are worked out when
I disabled it and re-installed the driver, and the drive DOES show up in
'Safely Remove Hardware' and the Device Manager...

I kinda diagnosed that it doesnt have a Drive Letter assigned, due to the
flash drive working in my XP x64 dual-boot.


Thanks

 

[Wandering]

Does it show up in Disk Manager? If it does, you should be able to right
click it and assign a drive letter.

You might want to put it on you XP machine, and recover all the data, then
format it and replace the data. Remember to use FAT32.

Good luck.

 

[mattperry]

No, it doesnt show in Disk Manager... Thats the problem... Also, I noticed
that my iPod doesnt even show in iTunes... :-(

 

[Gary Mount]

"Remember to use FAT32"

Why FAT32 ? What about NTFS ? Isn't NTFS more robust than FAT32?

 

[mattperry]

FAT32 allocates data better than NTFS in some cases, and PCs that are below
W2K like ME, 98 cannot read NTFS. Also, Macs cant read them... I updated my
PC overnight, I let it install all of the updates, and when I clicked on My
Computer this morning, Removable Disk F:/ showed up, but when I
double-clicked, it just said insert media or whatever... :-|

 

[Wandering]

Well, I'm not an expert, but I'm told that flash drives need Fat32. On a few
gigs, there isn't much to chose from in any event, unless you want to
transfer files over 4 gigs.

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

Correct. Fat32 is required for the present devices. exFat is a new file
system designed for portable and mobile devices that will allow much larger
files than 4GB but exFat is not final yet. Unfortunately exFat will not be
backwards compatible with the present devices.

 

[Richard G. Harper [MVP]]

Open up a "Run" command and type "diskmgmt.msc" (no quotes of course) in the
run box. Alternatively, run the Computer Management tool and run Disk
Management from there.

 

[Curious]

Not all MOBOs support 8GB of memory. Check your MOBO and BIOS
documentation.

 

[Curious]

Ignore my above post from me if there is one on your system I did select to
delete it.