USB-C Flash Drive not found on Swift 3 SF314-59

I have a Transcend USB-C Flash Drive 64GB and it is not being found on my Swift 3 SF314-59.It is not found in Windows 10 or as a bootable device.

My Phone (Pixel 5) and my new Google Titan FIDO USB-C key work fine on the Swift 3 Thunderbolt 4 port.

The flash drive works fine on my partners Aspire 5 A515-56 and plugged into the Pixel 5.

Things I have tried :-Plugged it into the Swift 3 straight from the packet - nothing.

Did a full reformat on the Aspire 5, when I plugged it into the Swift 3 I got a beep to show it was found then a beep for it instantly disappearing.

Installed CloudReady on it using the Aspire 5 then tried to boot the Swift 3 and the device does not show up in the BIOS as a bootable option.

I remember reading there was some sort of compatibility issue with USB-C and one of the Version 3 Gens and Thunderbolt 3 but the Swift 3 is Thunderbolt 4 and that issue is no longer a problem

I have looked for drivers in Windows and the Intel Driver & Support Assistant and nothing relevant shows up.

I have tried some utilities I have used to reformat broken / unrecognisable flash drives before and they can not see it.

Any ideas?

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billsey

A couple of ideas for what to look at; in Device Manager, does anything show up when it's inserted, and does that go away again almost immediately? In Disk Management does anything show up when it's inserted, and again does that go away?

spamthroat

Just gave that a try with Disk Management open and it momentarily appeared as it should as a

drive called Transcend then it disappeared.
The first time I tried this I only had explorer open and it was not quick enough to show the drive.

It is just strange that the drive works fine in the Aspire USB-C port but not in the Swift Thunderbolt 4 port but other things work fine in the Thunderbolt 4 port and Thunderbolt 4 is meant to be backwards compatible with everything.

Since it is not found during boot that would suggest it is more of a fundamental problem then something with Windows.

billsey

So the next step I can suggest is to try a different device or three in that port. It might be something weird that Transcend is doing, it might be something weird with that particular drive, it might be something weird Acer is doing with the port. My Swift 3 is an older model, so I can't test with the same hardware here...

spamthroat

My Pixel 5 connects OK but the phone makes the connection not the PC so I don't get the device showing up in the usual USB thing in the system tray, still showing in Explorer though. There is an option on the phone usb connection notification to choose what device is in control but it will not let me change it to the computer.

Also my Google USB-C Titan key works but I am not 100% certain it is an actual USB-C device, rather its a device that has a USB-C connector.

Any USB-A device connected using an adapter (The one that came in the Pixel 5 box) to the USB-C socket works.

billsey

So my tendency at this point is to point fingers at the Transcend. They may have done something that seems to work fine on a Mac, but breaks in Windows, or breaks on this laptop. The Windows implementations of Thunderbolt are done by Intel, not Apple, so there could easily be differences...

spamthroat

Maybe not!

I got to try out one of these Kingston drives and it does work - sort of!
When plugged in to the Thunderbolt 4 port it will generally show up in windows but then might work or randomly keep disconnecting and reconnecting. Sometimes it will end up stable and usable, sometimes not.

I did get to try the Trancend stick on a Dell laptop (Latitude 5520, 11th gen i5) which according to a very generic spec sheet for the whole range not one for that actual specific model / part number should have Thunderbolt 4 ports and it worked fine there first time.

Athwart

spamthroat said:

Maybe not!

I got to try out one of these Kingston drives and it does work - sort of!
When plugged in to the Thunderbolt 4 port it will generally show up in windows but then might work or randomly keep disconnecting and reconnecting. Sometimes it will end up stable and usable, sometimes not.

I have a different model (SF314-57) and it has Thunderbolt 3 not 4. However I have had the same symptoms of sometimes working - sometimes not and/or disconnecting - reconnecting with an external SSD drive.

I found that turning the USB-C connector up the other way resolves the problem. USB-C is supposed to be dual sided but it seems not all sides are created equal!

billsey

That sounds like it'd be a cable issue... The two sides are supposed to be identical.

spamthroat

I did try it the other way up and it made no difference.

If it was a physical issue with a "bad" connector in the laptop then I would not expect the phone / titan key to work either or at least work intermittently.

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