USB drive issues

So, I picked up this 16GB Silicon Power USB drive, and everything was working perfectly fine at first. But then, I tried formatting it to NTFS—you know, just so I could actually store movies larger than 4GB without hitting that file size limit—and now my laptop won't even recognize it. I hear the usual connection sound when I plug it in, but then absolutely nothing happens. It’s the same story with my TV and my home theater system; they don't see the drive at all. Is there any way to fix this, or should I just toss it in the trash? I've formatted USB sticks to NTFS plenty of times before without any issues.

Maybe give it another shot and try formatting it as FAT32 just to see if that actually gets things moving for you.

I can't do anything about it when the drive icon doesn't even show up in the first place—that's the whole damn problem.

Disk Management should pick it up if it actually shows up in the system.

It recognizes the drive, but I'm getting a "the device cannot start" error, and now I can't even format it. I checked under Device Manager instead of Disk Management.

Just jump into Disk Management like we discussed earlier... If you can see the drive listed there, there's a really good chance you'll be able to just wipe it and create a new partition.

Not a chance. I went down to Target and they just swapped it out for a different one.

So, I’m running into this weird issue with a new 8GB Verbatim thumb drive...

The system sees it as 7.45 GB, so I dump my music and photos on there, everything works fine, speed is decent.

But here's the catch: if I try to move a single file larger than 4GB, it tells me the drive is full.

It’s empty, obviously. I grab a 4.5GB file, try to copy it, and get a "disk full" error.

Meanwhile, I can toss 7GB of music onto it without a hitch.

wtf?

Your USB drive is formatted as FAT32, which is why you can't move any single file larger than 4GB onto it. Just reformat it to NTFS and you'll be fine.

thanks, though I don't even see an option to format to NTFS... gonna go hunt down some software

EDIT: figured out a workaround using Device Manager. Problem solved, thanks 👍

Don't mention it.

I’m really hoping someone here can help me out because I am currently losing my mind trying to recover some critical business files.

So, here’s the deal: I’ve got this 8 GB PNY thumb drive. A while back, I moved some super important data onto it, but I haven't actually had a reason to plug it in until now. When I finally hooked it up to my laptop, things got weird immediately. The system says I have about 1 GB of free space left, but when I look at the files that are actually showing up—which total less than 100 MB—it’s barely a fraction of what I originally put on there. The kicker? Even though I can't see the files, the properties window is dead set on telling me that roughly 7 GB of space is being used.

Does anyone have a clue what's actually going on here, or better yet, how I can grab those missing files before I totally freak out?🙂

Maybe try booting up with a Linux Mint live USB to see if you can access those files from there.

Thanks for the reply!
So, you're telling me I should just go ahead and install Linux OS and then give it a shot? Is there really nothing a bit more straightforward? I’ve never even touched Linux in my life—I'm strictly a Windows user through and through. But hey, if this actually works, I guess I'm willing to dive in, especially since the data I'm dealing with is pretty critical...