USB pen drive works on Windows 7, but not Windows 8

[Carfax83]

I have a 64 GB Patriot Xporter Magnum USB pen drive that works on my wife's Windows 7 laptop, but will not work on my Windows 8 machine. After inserting into a USB port, Windows 8 installs the drivers but when I go to access the drive (removable disk F), it says please insert a disk into removable disk (F).

I should note that this pen drive is weird, because even under Windows 7, it required that I set up a password to access it. However, I called Patriot and asked them about this, and they said that this particular USB drive does NOT have the password feature..

Strange...

 

[Dahak]

What does the password dialog windows looks like? one thing that i can think if is if for some reason its asking to setup the password would be Bitlocker to Go wants to protected it

 

[Carfax83]

It just says enter password I think. I had to setup a password when I first bought it years ago when I was running Windows 7.

I was using Windows 7 Ultimate as well, so maybe it was Bitlocker to Go as you say, but I don't recall ever setting it up or anything. If I remember correctly, I plugged it into the USB port and then I was prompted to create a password. After doing so, I was then able to access the drive.

 

[ViRGE]

Out of curiosity, when you go to Disk Management under Windows 8, what does it show for the flash drive? Are there multiple partitions?

 

[Carfax83]

Out of curiosity, when you go to Disk Management under Windows 8, what does it show for the flash drive? Are there multiple partitions?

There are no partitions at all. It's completely grey in fact. This is one of the strangest problems I've ever had.

I think I'm going to pull all the data off the drive and reformat it..

 

[vailr]

Is there any functional difference between using a USB 2.0 port and a USB 3.0 port?
I have a similar type problem with Windows 8 driver vs. Windows 7 driver, on a dual-boot Gigabyte Z77-UD5H machine's USB 3.0 port + Team F108 USB 3.0 thumb drive. Cannot be read when using a USB 3.0 port in Windows 8, but works fine on the same port in Windows 7, or in either operating system with a USB 2.0 port.

 

[ViRGE]

Is there any functional difference between using a USB 2.0 port and a USB 3.0 port?
I have a similar type problem with Windows 8 driver vs. Windows 7 driver, on a dual-boot Gigabyte Z77-UD5H machine's USB 3.0 port + Team F108 USB 3.0 thumb drive. Cannot be read when using a USB 3.0 port in Windows 8, but works fine on the same port in Windows 7, or in either operating system with a USB 2.0 port.

USB 3 involves more pins than USB 2. So in theory you could damage one of the USB 3 pins and still leave the device usable in USB 2 mode, but only on a USB 2 port.