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I am running Windows 10 and am attempting to view files that are on a SanDisk Ultra 32gb USB 3.0 memory stick.

It shows on (D:) drive as EFI and when I click on it nothing is in this drive. When I check properties it states that there is 2.00 kb used and there is 196mb of free space.

I have checked online and believe that my computer is viewing a partition. When I plug the usb into my phone and tablet it asks me to format it. As I am unable to access these files anywhere else I do not want to format it as I will lose these files.

When I view Disk Management it shows 3 partitions:

200mb healthy (efi system)

  1. 65 gb healthy (primary partition) 128 mb unallocated

I believe that the files were put on the usb stick with a Mac although that is an assumption on my behalf.

Formatting is not an option for me though as I am unable to get the original files.

DavidPostill
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Maximus Glover
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    The drive should be a single NTFS partition, Windows does not like, removable drives with multiple partitions. If you want to do that, assign a letter, to the partition with actual data on it instead of the EFI partition. – Ramhound Sep 09 '16 at 13:38
  • Thanks Ramhound how do I assign a letter to the primary partition? I'm viewing in Disk Management and if I right click on the primary partition everything is greyed out except "delete" – Maximus Glover Sep 09 '16 at 13:46
  • The same way you unassign the drive letter to EFI. [How do I mount the EFI partition on Windows 8.1 so that it is readable and writeable?](http://superuser.com/questions/662823/how-do-i-mount-the-efi-partition-on-windows-8-1-so-that-it-is-readable-and-write). You should research each command so you understand what is going on. – Ramhound Sep 09 '16 at 13:47
  • [Did Windows 10 just add a partition to my hard drive?](http://superuser.com/questions/1112651/did-windows-10-just-add-a-partition-to-my-hard-drive/1112758#1112758) – Ramhound Sep 09 '16 at 13:50

2 Answers2

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Checked the computer first for viruses then do this:

  1. Run cmd - Navigate to Accessories>Command Prompt (Run this with Admin rights)
  2. type attrib . X: -r -s -h /s /d (where X: is the drive, this is your flash drive letter)
  3. you can invoke other commands by typing attrib /?
Prashantc
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  • Thanks for your answer, I've just logged into say I've solved the problem, thanks anyway – Maximus Glover Sep 10 '16 at 10:44
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    Welcome to Super User! This is really a comment and **not** an answer to the original question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post - you can always comment on your own posts, and once you have sufficient [reputation](https://superuser.com/help/whats-reputation) you will be able to [comment on any post](https://superuser.com/help/privileges/comment). Please read [Why do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/214174) – DavidPostill Sep 10 '16 at 20:32
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I've solved the problem - the partition was showing unformatted and windows wouldn't let me do anything with it without formatting, which was out of the question! if anyone has the same problem I downloaded Easeus data recovery wizard and this enabled me to recover the files.

Maximus Glover
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