How to Find Out the Manufacturer of a Flash Drive

If you're curious about the brand of an unmarked flash drive, you can usually find out the manufacture information by accessing the hardware ID information in Windows. This information normally includes the manufacturer's name, although in some cases you'll find a vendor ID instead, in which case you'll need to do a little bit of extra detective work.

Plug the flash drive into your PC.

Press "Windows-E" on the keyboard to open File Explorer or Windows Explorer.

Right-click the listing for your flash drive and select "Properties."

Select the "Details" tab in the Properties window.

Click the "Property" drop-down menu and select "Hardware IDs" from the list. Windows displays several lines of ID information from the flash drive's controller chip.

Check the information for the manufacturer's name. If you don't recognize any text as the name of a disk manufacturer, run the text through a search engine such as Google until you get a hit. Sometimes the manufacturer is identified only by its vendor ID, in a form similar to "vid_1058". In this case, run a search such as "vid 1058" to find the manufacturer's name.