USB not formatting properly

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

I have a USB drive which is 256mb. One day, I found that the information on
it was corrupted. The USB wasn't knocked or removed incorrectly from the USB
port, and Windows could not format it. It says the file system type is RAW
but when I try to make it FAT or FAT32 with the Windows formatter it isn't
successful. Can anyone help me? I don't know what to do!
 
You can get a USB format utility from HP
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/support/files/serveroptions/us/download/20306.html

I have used this on 4-5 various thumb drives without any problem.

There is also the Microsoft USB Flash Drive Manager available here
http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/prices.aspx?itemId=1744677&stext= to help
you work with your drive.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
It still doesn't work, the HP one says that it cannot format the drive and
the USB manager doesn't seem to recognise that my flash drive is plugged in.
 
Delete the partition that is there now. Start fresh. Create a new partition
and then format the partition.

--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
I tried to delete the partition using what the Help and Support Centre told
me, none of the options worked. Using Disk Management, I right clicked on my
USB drive. "Delete Partition" was shaded out, so I couldn't use it. Using the
command prompt, I did what the Help and Support Centre told me to do, when I
typed "list drives" my USB wasn't there, only my hard drive. Is there another
way to delete the partition?
 
Get Hex Workshop: http://www.bpsoft.com/

Open the drive (identify the right drive by size).
The overwrite as much as you can with zeros.
It may be not enough to overwrite the first
512 Bytes!

Then try again the disk management.


Uwe
 
In Hex Workshop the hex code on the USB is just FFFF FFFF FFFF FFFF etc. Is
that the right thing? Because I am not familiar with this, and I really don't
want to stuff it up. (I use Hex Workshop to mod Halo, and when it stuffs up,
the only way to reset it is with a backup. And I don't have a backup USB.)
 
The first sector of the drive should contain either
a partition table or a boot sector. If all is FFFF
then I would say that the drive is defective.

If the the drive doesn't work than it cannot become
worse.

But if you are still full of hope then create a
backup before using the DD command known from Unix.
Get a Win32 port:
http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/UnxUtils.zip

To backup drive U: to C:\drive_u.bin use

dd if=\\.\U: of=C:\drive_u.bin bs=8192k

bs=8192k makes it use a big buffer which makes it faster.

To restore the image file use

dd if=C:\drive_u.bin of=\\.\U: bs=8192k


Uwe
 
I replaced all the FFFF's with 0000's and tried to format the drive. Windows
couldn't format it, and when I went back to Hex to make it all FFFF's again,
it was already like that. Hex did save the 0000's correctly, but the drive
still reverted to FFFF's. Do you know why this is?
 
Back
Top