Format

• If your flash drive is not allowing you to tranfer materials back and forth from a computer, make sure the flash drive is in the right format for that particular operating system. Most flash drives come in FAT32 format, which will work between most operating systems. To check your format on a Windows machine, open up My Computer, right click on the flash drive, and select format. From here you can see the format and change it if you need to. Be warned that changing the format can erase the information from your flash drive. To change format on a Linux machine, you follow the same process. For Macintosh Computers, open disk utility from finder. Your flash drive will be in the left hand column. Select the flash drive then the erase tab. Here you can select the format for your drive.
  
  

Unrecognized

• If the flash drive is not recognized on your computer, make sure that the USB drive you are plugging it into is functioning properly. Try plugging in a known good device into the USB drive. Make sure that you are not plugging the drive into a low speed USB port, as a flash drive will not power off a low speed port. If you are trying to plug the drive into a USB hub and it is not recognized, try plugging the drive directly into the computer.
  
  

Software

• Make sure that you have the latest software installed on your computer. Sometimes old software will not allow certain flash drives to work on your system. Check the flash drives software requirements to ensure you have the right software installed.