Solved Laptop does not recognize 2TB Flash Drive

Hi I am new to Windows11 (Home) and am so glad to have found this forum.

Have purchased the Sandisk Extreme 2 TB Flash Drive to create a system image of my new laptop, which has 2 large Hard Drives. After using the Flash Drive once, I deleted the contents. This has created a partition and made it unusable for the large image backup. Finally, I was able to delete the partition via command prompt.

Now, I have the original storage space back. All of the space shows as “unallocated” now in Disk Management also shows in Control Panel and Device Manager.

My problem now is that this Flash Drive does not show up anymore in “This PC” “Devices and Drives” with the other drives like Hard Drive, Google Drive, etc.
I plugged in other Flash drives are working well and this 2TB Flash drive also shows as working well and so is laptop.

I have tried other USB ports uninstalled /reinstalled driver,,ran trouble shooter, etc.

Nothing seems to help. If anybody has any suggestion, I would very much appreciate it.

Thank you very much in advance for any suggestion. Ann

Hello @anken and welcome to Eleven Forum.
The drive needs a partition, to show up in ThisPC

In Disk Management, right click it and create an NTFS partition, and give it a drive letter, like W or something far down in the alphabet.




On a side note, you might want to grab some partitioning software for future needs.
Something like Minitool Partition Wizard (free)
It's like Disk Management on steroids.

Try the new way Windows 11 can format your drive,

Fabler2 said:

Try the new way Windows 11 can format your drive,

How to manage storage devices on Windows 11

These are the ways you can manage storage devices on your computer.

www.windowscentral.com

Click to expand...

Learn something new every day. Thanks!

Thank you so much for your help, Ghot! I installed "Mini Tool Partition". What a great and easy progam to have for future uses!
Everything is working well now. Also, a thank you to Fabler2 and Scott for taking the time to answer my questions!
I'm so happy to have found this forum!! Thank you!

Thank you very much for your previous help. As you can see, I’m new at this... Now I have some other questions:

I have splurged and have the “Sandisk Extreme SSD 2 TB”. I have also downloaded “MiniTool partition Maker”which is great, and would like to “Create a Recovery Drive” on the first partition (currently 32 GB Fat32).
The rest of the Sandisk is currently unallocated. On this partition I would like load the “System Image backup”. There will probably some extra space. Can I use it to make incremental backups?
Do both partitions have to be NFTS?
Do both partitions show up as separate drives?
If I have to use the Recover Drive to get Windows running again, can I then use the other partition and recover the System Image if necessary?
Again, I would appreciate your suggestions. Thanks in advance,