Windows 10: Formatting a Thumb Drive

Just bought a new laptop with Windows 10 and MS Office 365. I tried to format a thumb drive but when I select File Explorer, all I get is a list of files I've recently opened. I do not see the Thumb Drive. Doesn't matter if I select any files in the Recent Folder, I don't see where the Thumb Drive is.

This would also be an issue if I want to transfer files from my laptop to the Thumb Drive.

:)

 

Identify Existing USB Thumb Drive's Format

Hi:

I have a ScanDisk 32-GB thumb drive that functions in my 2013 Honda Accord for playing MP3 files. I want to determine which type of file system, FAT or NTFS, is used for that particular flash thumb drive.

I also have other, new, 32GB ScanDisk thumb drives, which say that only 28 GB space is available; so I want to do one of the following to a new thumb drive, whichever is needed:

1. Remove the encryption files from the thumb drive to allow full 32 GB available storage space.
2. Format the new 32GB drive with the proper file system, when prompted to select either NTFS or FAT in File Manager.

Thus, my desire to identify which type of file system is presently used on the thumb drive that plays MP3 in my car. Note: that thumb drive also has the (defaulted) ScanDisk's encryption files. If I am not mistaken, reformatting a thumb drive would remove any ScanDisk encryption files. But, I do not know which file system to use for MP3 files.

Thanks for reading this. TIA for suggestions/comments.

 

Can a thumb drive be disabled by malware?

There are quite a few possibilities to what happened to your thumb drive:

1. It might be a simple issue where the partition got corrupted: In this case you can go to Computer Management > Disk Management> and check out what partition your thumb drive currently has. If it currently is in RAW format or is just unallocated, I suggest you unallocate the entire drive and make a new partition. It's possible that you can recover upto 99% of your files with a tool like EaseUS DataRecovery Wizard Pro.
   
2. The malware corrupted your thumb drive's firmware: The malware that your thumb drive may have encountered may be similar to something like BadUSB. It may or may not have modified your drive's firmware to transmit malware, but in any case your thumb drive's pretty dead, and there's not much you can do about it.
   

 

Kingston thumb drive format

How do I format a usb thumb drive for music? Kingston Data Traveler, Windows 10