My Mac Air does not readily recognize my thumb drive. The first time I inserted it, there was no problem. After that, it does not readily show when I am in “Finder”. And, just now, I clumsily closed the drive, I believe. Not sure if it is safe to eject and re-insert, or not. So, I am hoping there is a way I can make it reappear in “Finder”? Specifically, it usually appears at the top of the left margin under “Locations”.
Any ideas how to make “Finder” recognize my thumb drive?
Unless the data on it is actively being accessed, it shouldn’t be an issue to pull it out.
I’m not sure of any way to guarantee a USB drive will be read. Issues causing a drive to not be read are legion. Could be the port, could be the formatting of the drive, could be the drive itself, could be hard drive corruption, etc.
If you open up Disk Utility, a program that ships with the Mac, it will tell you if the drive is detected by the system but not mounted.
If it’s present but unmounted, it is safe to physically remove. If you want to mount it, there should be a “mount” button that will mount it on the file system.
Sometimes drives that don’t reliably automount on insert have issues with the drive. Sometimes rebooting the computer can help unstick some OS state that’s causing problems. Sometimes it’s some more difficult issue and good luck.
I had a similar issue with my 2014 Mac Mini, in that the built into card reader stopped reading cards. I bought a cheap USB reader which has worked flawlessly ever since.
This time, I had to disconnect and reconnect the thumb drive - assuming I closed it by mistake. Since Excel could not locate a recent file I was working on, I felt confident I must have closed the thumb drive by mistake. I just hesitate to remove the drive without closing - never knowing what damage I could do. When I reattached the thumb drive, the laptop did recognize it (this time).
I guess I’ll have to play each incident by ear.