There's nothing worse than plugging in a USB drive and nothing happening. It can be tricky to figure out why on Windows, so we have some suggestions.

Before you write off the USB drive, you have several options at your disposal. First, you should check that the drive is correctly connected to the computer. Changing the USB port can sometimes help.

A recovery USB drive is a separate, portable flash drive that your computer can use instead of your main hard drive to start up from.