USB Drive appears as Disconnected Device in Waves Central

Aug 06, 2023

If you cannot manage your licenses in Waves Central because your USB drive appears in the ‘Disconnected Devices’ tab in the ‘Licenses’ page, follow the troubleshooting steps below.

General notes:

  1. We recommend activating licenses on normal USB flash drives, rather than on external hard drives or SSDs. Some external hard drives and SSDs have been known to not be recognized in Waves Central on some systems.
  2. Make sure to use a USB flash drive from a well-known manufacturer. Unbranded, generic drives are not as dependable for licenses.

Before you begin, make sure that the USB device is currently connected to the computer and recognized by the operating system. Once verified, follow the steps below and try accessing your licenses after each step. If the issue is not yet resolved, continue to the next step:

  • Restart the computer.
  • Connect the USB drive to a different USB port.
  • Make sure the USB device is connected to the computer in the same way it was connected when you activated the license. For example, if the USB device was connected directly to the computer and it is now connected via a USB hub, try connecting it directly to the computer again.
  • Reformat the drive to a supported format by following the steps in this article.
    Important: Make sure to back up any data (excluding the Waves Licenses folder) that is on the USB drive before formatting it. The licenses on the drive will be re-written automatically once it is recognized by Waves Central.
  • Try connecting the USB drive to a different computer and see if it is recognized by Waves Central there. If it is, we recommend using a different drive which is recognized on all your computers. Learn how to move licenses.
  • In case you activated your licenses on an SD card - Make sure to use the same card reader you used when activating the license. The card reader itself is recognized in Waves Central rather than the SD card. For that reason, we do not recommend using SD cards for licenses.

As a last resort, in case you are still not able to get the drive recognized by Waves Central, use the Recover Licenses option from within Central to retrieve your licenses.

Find solutions to more Waves Central errors and issues here.

Need further assistance? Contact Technical Support.