my computer doesn't want to recognize blank thumb-drives.
I want to copy a thumb drive that has pictures from a trip.
iMac 27″, macOS 10.15
With an M-series laptop, you must approve the USB stick can be accessed. Sometimes this pop-up notice does not occur, or is hidden from view. I personally prefer to configure my Privacy & Security System Settings to "Allow accessories to connect Automatically when unlocked" instead of the default "Ask...".
If your Mac asks you to allow an accessory to connect - Apple Support
It is also possible the USB stick or any adapter/hub/dock has an issue with that USB stick as well. Unfortunately the quality of USB sticks are extremely poor....plus Macs can be picky about the drives as well. Is the physical USB stick even seen by Disk Utility? You may need to click "View" within Disk Utility and select "Show All Devices" before the physical drives appear on the left pane of Disk Utility.
If the physical USB stick is not shown, then you have some sort of hardware issue involved. If the physical USB stick appears, but does not automatically mount the volume on the USB stick, then try to use Disk Utility to manually mount it. Do you have another computer that you can try to see if that USB stick will mount and access those pictures?
If it won't mount, then you have a decision to make regarding how important those pictures are. You can try running Disk Utility First Aid on the USB stick & its volume, but this has a slight potential for making the problem worse (since we don't know what the real problem is). You can also try contacting a professional data recovery service if these are the only copies of those pictures. You can try using a third party data recovery app such as Disk Drill or Stellar Data Recovery (most provide a free trial to show what items it can find, but you need to pay to recover those found files), but again....this is a bit risky without knowing what the problem is if this is the only copy of those pictures.
Are you running any anti-virus apps, cleaning/optimizer apps, or third party security utilities? If so, they could be causing a problem.
Try disconnecting all other external devices in case one of them is causing a problem & try using a different USB port, cable, adapter. If you are already connecting the USB stick directly to the computer, then try connecting the USB stick to a hub instead since I have seen some users report this can allow some drives to work on more recent Macs.
