What happened to my USB drive? Explorer doesn't show it for no reason

Windows 10 x64 version 1909

I know for a FACT that it is not the USB's fault - the USB works fine and it seems to be okay in Device Manager too. I can even use it with other programmes and other operating systems. It just doesn't show in Windows Explorer. I am using a standard USB for storage. Does anyone know what is going on here?

Assign a drive letter to it in Device Manager.

PiKo said:

Assign a drive letter to it in Device Manager.

Did you mean Disk Management?

Try3 said:

What shows up in Disk mgmt?

It shows under "Disk 2" as 2MB healthy and the rest is unallocated (I remember flashing an iso to it with balenaEtcher, this confused me. The problems started happening after I did this.) and when I unplug it, it just disappears. It doesn't seem to have a drive letter, and I cannot assign one.

As mentioned earlier, post some screenshots.

In case you want to delete everything, right click in device mgr on a volume of the stick and click: delete volume. After that I would fast format the stick.

paulco said:

As mentioned earlier, post some screenshots.

Sorry, here they are.

This is what it looks like in Device Manager. Disk 2 is the USB that I have plugged in.

This is what it looks like in File Explorer. While there IS a USB drive (G:), it isn't the one I'm looking for.

PiKo said:

In case you want to delete everything, right click in device mgr on a volume of the stick and click: delete volume. After that I would fast format the stick.

No, I have stuff on here that I want to access. I need to move files between computers and this is the most efficient way to do so. I don't want to delete anything.

Try3 said:

This computer says [in your Disk mgmt diagram - it's Disk mgmt not Device mgr] that Disk 2, the USB, has nothing on it and has not even been set up to contain anything. I think that utility you mentioned has destroyed your data.

Backup the file contents on another computer, if you can find one that recognises it correctly.

When you have backed it up then you can return to Disk mgmt, right-click on the Unallocated space, initialise it then format it. You will then also be able to assign a specific drive letter if you want to do so.

Denis

Windows 7 agrees, the rest of it is unallocated. How would I go about initialising it? All the options in Windoze 10 and Windows 7 are disabled.

First step: allocate it