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MurrayM

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#112190 29-Nov-2012 15:51
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I've got a 16GB thumb drive that just died on me last night.  One minute it was working fine and then the next it isn't.  I've tried it on three different PC's and all have trouble with it.

When I plug it in the light inside it flashes a bit and the Windows makes a ding-dong noise to show it's been plugged in.  In Windows Explorer it shows up as a removable drive and has a drive letter.  The light inside the drive then flashes on and off repeatedly.

Clicking on the drive in Windows Explorer shows an empty drive.  Right-clicking and trying to create a new folder causes an error to appear: "Unable to create the folder 'New Folder' The system cannot find the file specified".

If I try to run a Chkdsk on it then nothing happens (Chkdsk just does nothing and fails silently).

If I try to right-click on the drive and select Format then nothing happens, I don't even get the format dialog box.

If I drop to a command prompt and do a DIR E: then I get "The system cannot find the file specified"

The drive shows up ok in Device Manager.

The drive doesn't contain anything that I need to recover, but I'd just like to get it working again if possible.

Can anyone suggest any programs that might be able to test the drive or reformat it?

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ubergeeknz
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  #724729 29-Nov-2012 15:57
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You could try a linux box? Might be able to force it to format.  But probably it just turned into a keyring.



Oblivian
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  #724731 29-Nov-2012 16:02
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Sounds like Time for a bootsector editor like BootICE

It can change to grub/windows/dos and format accordingly as required.

The alternate is good ol 'diskpart' under a CMD prompt to re-create it.

MurrayM

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  #724732 29-Nov-2012 16:06
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Oblivian: Sounds like Time for a bootsector editor like BootICE

It can change to grub/windows/dos and format accordingly as required.

The alternate is good ol 'diskpart' under a CMD prompt to re-create it.


BootICE sounds good, downloading now...



MurrayM

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  #724735 29-Nov-2012 16:16
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Nope, even though the drive shows up as being E: in Windows Explorer, BootICE can't detect it.

Looks like it's toast!

ubergeeknz
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  #724742 29-Nov-2012 16:19
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IIRC, USB flash drives don't usually have a partition table or bootsector, the filesystem goes straight onto the raw disk.

Oblivian
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  #724749 29-Nov-2012 16:27
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Out of curiosity, tried changing its drive letter to something like Q? just incase its having a windows mental

The other one I use is rufus

http://rufus.akeo.ie/

MurrayM

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  #724754 29-Nov-2012 16:36
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Thanks for the suggestions.

Rufus detects the drive but won't do anything until I select Capacity, Cluster Size, etc from its drop-down lists, but the lists are empty so I can't select anything!

It's log file shows:

Rufus version 1.2.0.183
Found drive 'USB DISK 2.0 USB Device'
1 device found.
IOCTL_DISK_GET_DRIVE_GEOMETRY_EX failed for drive E: [0x00000002] The system cannot find the file specified.

 
 
 

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gzt

gzt
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  #724771 29-Nov-2012 17:34
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Nasty fail. Did you try diskpart? You could try gparted also.

You could try one of the low level format tools like http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/

MurrayM

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  #724780 29-Nov-2012 17:51
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Yeah I tried diskpart and it couldn't see the drive either.

I'm looking at HDD LLF Low Level Format Tool now...

MurrayM

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  #724785 29-Nov-2012 17:56
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Nope, it couldn't see the drive either. Must be really stuffed!

gzt

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  #724788 29-Nov-2012 17:59
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Yeah I think so, but get windows out of the way by booting gparted live [from optical].

.. and using that to remove partitions, create new, rewrite function in the menu somewhere.

CruciasNZ
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  #724805 29-Nov-2012 18:15
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I rescued one of mine using GParted on Ubuntu. Can't be more specific other than one minute it was munted and without a filesystem, the next (well about 5 minutes later) it was fine




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  #724811 29-Nov-2012 18:37
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Try this, got usb drives detected by my tv and computer again after they got stuffed up by linux usb installer software. 
http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
Drives were barely mountable in windows after a few formatting tries and after this software they work again




Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:

 

http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7033587-3B


MurrayM

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  #724834 29-Nov-2012 19:18
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paulmilbank: Try this, got usb drives detected by my tv and computer again after they got stuffed up by linux usb installer software. 
http://hddguru.com/software/HDD-LLF-Low-Level-Format-Tool/
Drives were barely mountable in windows after a few formatting tries and after this software they work again


Yup, I tried that one and it couldn't see the drive at all.

I'll try GParted tomorrow and see if that has any luck.

MurrayM

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  #725088 30-Nov-2012 12:05
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GParted couldn't detect the flash drive, so I guess that's the final nail in the coffin. In the bin it goes!

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