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My thumb drive is not showing up on my Macbook Pro

My thumb drive was working until I restarted my computer while it was still trying to upload some stuff, than when I tried to connect it after that it wouldn't connect. i also tried it on my Macbook Air and it still didn't connect. Theirs a lot of stuff I need on the thumb drive. How can i get it to work again?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 14.0

Posted on Oct 22, 2023 7:46 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 22, 2023 8:28 AM

It could be that the drive is damaged due to the rebooting when files where written on it.


Try and insert it in your MacBook>go to the lauchpad>type disk utility. See if your thumb drive is visible in disk utility. If it is. you can select it and try to perform disk first aid

3 replies

Oct 23, 2023 7:23 PM in response to Ccor201

If the USB stick physical drive is seen by macOS in the System Profiler or within Disk Utility, then you can try using a data recovery app such as Data Rescue or Stellar Data Recovery. Within Disk Utility you may need to click "View" and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drives appear on the left pane of Disk Utility.


If the physical drive is not seen, then you have a hardware issue of some sort (USB stick, or USB-C port, or adapter/dock/hub). Try disconnecting all other external devices from the Mac in case one of them is causing a problem.


FYI, don't store the only copy of any important data on a USB stick since USB sticks are very unreliable. Even popular name brand USB sticks are not that reliable.


Also, people should have frequent and regular backups of their computer and all external media (including the cloud) which contains important & unique data. People should never have just a single copy of any important data.

My thumb drive is not showing up on my Macbook Pro

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