Missing USB drive.

[Dietlard]

Hey Guys, it's been a while....
Just about to reinstall Windows 8 (accidentally deleted some needed folders !) and put my trusty 8Gb thumb drive into the usual slot, rebooted, pressed F8 a few times, list of drives to boot from appeared but there was no USB thumb drive in the list. Have recently (about 14 days ago) upgraded to latest BIOS (will edit version no. in in a second need to reboot) without any problems, have had a Startech.com 4 port PCIe x 4 SATA II card installed for a couple of years (in various Crosshairs) without problem, running Windows 8 Enterprise 64 bit, have 2x2.5" SSD drives and a 2.5" hybrid drive in a 4 bay hot swap unit (icy dock), have 1 mechanical drive in a separate hotswap bay, additional 6 mechanical drives inside the case. Normally put thumb drive in same slot, reboot, F8 and my USB thumb drive is on the list. I may have added an extra drive recently. Anyone got any ideas why thumb drive isn't showing up in list ? It isn't showing up in BIOS any more either. If I open Windows Explorer I can see and use the thumb drive without problem - just can't boot from it (any more). Is there a limit to the number of drives that can be listed to boot from in the BIOS ? Took out 1 drive and retried - no difference.

Thanks in advance blah blah blah.

[Dietlard]

couldn't find edit so had to reply....

BIOS version is 2002.

[hax0rmort]

thumb drive NEEDS to be formatted FAT format, i'm pretty sure FAT32 will work as well. Check that first before continuing.

[TheNerdBench]

My gosh man...pull some of the drives as I don't think the BIOS has enough space left to display your flash drive 🙂

On a more serious note remove all drives except the one you need to install Windows on...I would also pull that SATA PCIe card as it has it's own BIOS which may be causing the boot order problems. This will also help you make sure you don't format a drive that you didn't intend too 🙂

Keep us posted on your progress!

[Dietlard]

After some research (see http://www.rmprepusb.com/tutorials/repair-your-usb-flash-drive) I have come to the conclusion that the thumb drive is damaged. One of the indicators is that copying files to the USB runs at about 700kb/s, formatting it took over 2 hours.

So went out and bought an expensive one from a local shop (£9) this morning. Just in the middle of putting an ISO on it so I can reinstall Windows 8 from it - I expect it to boot as normal and will post to confirm if reinstallation goes as expected or otherwise if not.

No need to pull SATA card as it works fine (even though it is only SATA 2 it has SATA 2 drives connected to it), if I formatted a drive by mistake that would be a learning experience.

Later Guys.

[Dietlard]

Hi Guys.

As expected, put in new USB with Windows 8 ISO on ready for reinstallation, rebooted and it showed up in the BIOS ! So, problem solved and I guess it was a faulty thumb drive and still no problems with BIOS 2002.

Off to reinstall Windows 8. Again.

Cheers.

[TheNerdBench]

Glad it turned out to be a simple problem; sorry but I assumed you had already tried another USB Flash Drive with the same results...my bad.

Thanks for posting back what the problem was and enjoy the system.