Here are some basic tips to protect your data when your SanDisk Cruzer can't be recognized by your PC:
When your SanDisk Cruzer flash drive, external hard drive, USB drive, SD card, or other storage devices cannot be recognized or deleted by the computer, just follow the solutions below to resolve this issue and recover your data.
There are 3 major methods that can help you fix the SanDisk Cruzer USB not recognized or not detected issue. You should understand that the further you go, the harder but more effective the method becomes.
When SanDisk Cruzer or other brands of USB, external hard drive, or USB first becomes unrecognized, you can try the tips here for a quick fix:
Step 1. Change USB port and reconnect SanDisk Cruzer on PC. If the system still warns with unrecognized error, go to Step 2.
Step 2. Connect USB to another computer.
Step 3. Check if SanDisk Cruzer is recognized.
After this, you can open Windows Explorer and Disk Management to see if the USB shows up. If it shows up but not accessible, click the link - USB detected but not accessible to find a reliable solution. If not, move to Method 2 and Method 3 for hep.
When a USB device not recognized, you can run the Windows built-in troubleshooter to check and fix the error on your USB drive.
Step 1. Connect the not recognized Cruzer USB to your PC.
Step 2. Go to Settings by right-clicking the Windows icon and choosing "Settings".
Step 3. Click "Troubleshoot", scroll down to choose "Hardware and Devices".
Then the troubleshooter will run to detect and fix your USB device. After that, go to see whether the "USB device not recognized" issue has been resolved.
When the USB driver is outdated, Windows computer may not be able to detect or recognize the device. Follow tips here to resolve this issue immediately:
Step 1. Connect Cruzer USB to PC, right-click on This PC/My Computer, select "Manage".
Step 2. Click "Device Manager" and expand "Disk drivers".
Step 3. Right-click on the SanDisk Cruzer USB or portable device, select "Update driver".
Step 4. Click "Automatically search for driver software online" and wait for the process to complete.
Afterward, you can try to reconnect your USB drive to your PC and check whether the USB drive shows up or not.
Step 1. Connect Cruzer USB to PC, right-click on This PC/My Computer, select "Manage".
Step 2. Click "Device Manager" and expand "Disk drivers".
Step 3. Right-click on the SanDisk Cruzer USB or portable device, select "Uninstall device". Click "OK" to confirm the removal.
Step 4. Restart the computer and reconnect the USB to the PC. After Windows restarts, the USB driver will be automatically installed.
After this, you can reconnect the USB to your PC and check the saved data. If you still can't access the saved data, a wise choice is to restore data from SanDisk Cruzer first.
You can also watch this video to check more effective methods of how to fix the SanDisk Cruzer not recognized issue.
Most professional data recovery software can scan and restore data from inaccessible storage devices. We recommend you try Deep Data Recovery, which allows you to scan and find important data from a variety of storage devices including the SanDisk Cruzer, Toshiba USB drive, Seagate external hard drive, or Samsung SD card, etc.
Deep Data Recovery stunning features:
Follow these steps to restore your SanDisk Cruzer data now:
Step 1. Select file types and click "Next" to start.
Launch Deep Data Recovery on your PC. Select file types and click "Next" to start.
Step 2. Choose the USB drive to scan
Launch Deep Data Recovery and choose your USB drive where you lost important files. Click "Scan" to start.
Step 3. Check and preview USB drive data
When the scanning is finished, you can quickly locate a specific type of file by using the Filter feature as well as the Search option.
Step 4. Restore flash drive data
After checking and finding lost USB drive files, click "Recover" to restore them. You shall save the found files to a safe location on your PC rather than to your USB drive.
To make sure no further problem occurs to your USB device, the last operation is to format SanDisk Cruzer, changing its file system to FAT32.
Here we'd like to guide you to format it into FAT32 with Disk Management:
Step 1. Connect the USB to PC and right-click on This PC/My Computer, select "Manage".
Step 2. Click "Disk Management", locate and right-click SanDisk Cruzer, then choose "Format".
Step 3. Select FAT32 as the file system that you want to set to the USB device.
After this, you can continue using the device and saving files on the device again.
To sum up, when your external hard drive, USB, or SD card can't be recognized by PC, follow solutions on this page to repair it. If you are unable to access the saved data, Deep Data Recovery is always available to help.