Windows 10 won't read USB sticks or SD cards?

[ReformedCharacter]

Good afternoon, has anyone had similar issues to this please on Windows 10, latest version, up to date?

Insert a brand USB (Kingston) stick, new, is detected OK. Try to open USB stick and Windows says "Insert disk into USB drive "Z"." When it does this the computer becomes very slow like the CPU is 100%. I have to cancel the drive opening by clicking the "x" in the Windows dialogue box.

And -

Insert a new SD Card (tried Kingston and SanDisk), just out of the wrapper. SD Card is detected OK. Try to drag and drop a file or to format the SD Card - Windows says "the drive is write protected". They certainly aren't. (Treble checked).

I believe the two issues are related but I have no idea what might have suddenly caused this to happen. Anyone else had this and knows how to fix it?

Thanks.

RVF.

I would try Solution 1 (diskpart) first:

https://www.diskpart.com/windows-10/the ... -8523.html

RC

[supremetwo]

What is showing in 'Disk Management'?

[Infrasonic]

https://www.partitionwizard.com/free-pa ... nager.html

Handy free utility if you have a good collection of external storage media. Will multi file format partitions so useful for running multi OS scenarios on one drive.

[SteelCamel]

Possibly not related to your issues, but it's worth noting that one failure mode for flash based storage (such as SD cards, USB sticks and SSDs) is for them to go read-only. The reason is that the flash memory has a limited number of write cycles - and so the device is provided with a certain amount of extra storage and a controller that tries to manage the use to balance out the write cycles. If a block is worn out, the controller will mark it bad and use another one. Eventually there will be no spare blocks left - and the controller will switch to read-only mode. As this is internal to the device, it has no relation to the write-protect tab (if there is one) and it can't be reversed - the device needs to be replaced. So if you have a device that is obstinately read-only for no apparent reason, it might indicate that it's worn out and needs replacement.

[Infrasonic]

Thanks, the SD Cards and USB stick are all brand new, never used. I seem to be having an intermittent visible/invisible issue with the USB stick now. It might be infant mortality. Disappointing for Kingston, one of the better brands out there.

RVF

How are they formatted?
If you only need them for W10 then NTFS is worth sticking to, being journaled has some advantages . Or multi partition them and have FAT / exFAT /NTFS / EXT* combinations as required. Try doing a full format rather than quick if they are playing up.

[Infrasonic]

Paragon do a load of software for cross file format reading if it isn't native to the OS, so NTFS for Mac, Linux, Android et al.
Some free some paid for.
I use this free one as I have W10, Android / Chrome OS / Linux devices.
https://www.paragon-software.com/free/e ... s-android/