BEFORE posting flash drive problems

[Tedster]

STICKY!!!!

common solutions to flash drives that won't read:

I.

1. Find a computer with Windows98 (I think First Edition will work, but I used SE) and then download and install the driver for it (Windows98 requires a driver to read the drive).
2. Plug in the your Sandisk Cruzer.
2b. The drive should appear, try and open it and get all your data off, if the drive doesn't appear there may still be hope (details later).
3. Format the drive as FAT32.
4. Recopy your data back, and plug it into an XP machine, its fixed.

Now if 98 didn't see the drive, there is an HP utility for formatting USB flash drives, do a search on these forums for HP and Sandisk and Format and it will probably come up. Try that, if that doesn't work, I'd say there is a 90% chance your drive is hosed.

II.

an alternate solution for XP users is to go into

Control panel , admin tools, computer management, disk management

and right click on the letter of the flash drive that is not working

format it. (this will low level format the drive.) XP views the drive as a hard disk.

exit, then go to my computer,tools
right click on your flash drive, format, and high level format. Now your directory information will be loaded.
You may be able to use some recovery software to retrieve files if you haven't written anything else to the flash drive, but data recovery is not guaranteed.

III.

Use the Computer Manager - Storage- Disk Management Utility In Xp. High Light the Removable Drive and reallocate the space and Format the drive. Your total space may be smaller and you may need to do this again with the correct space amount.

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Bear in mind all of these solutions are designed to recover USE of your flash drive. In many cases, the data on it will be lost. I never recommend putting stuff on a flash drive that you cannot afford to risk losing. Flash drives are flakey by nature. Some manufactuers are better than others, but the very nature of Static Ram leaves them vulnerable. In other words, save your stuff to antoher device as well.

 

[KiwiHawk]

Thanks Tedster, I tried all that before I made the 1st post on this.
There is no response on the computer (not even an hourglass mouse pointer) when it is plugged in.
Tried the Win 98 thing nothing.
No reference to flash drive in disk management on either a WinXP or Win2000 PC

 

[Tedster]

then either your usb port is dead, or the flash drive is dead. Try the flash drive in another computer, if no response, then the flash stick is toast.

 

[(sh)IT_happens]

Recognised by Windows XP, but does not display drive

I have a similar problem,

The Kingston 512mb Data Traveller is recognised by Windows XP, but when clicking on "My Computer" it does not show the physical drive, and therefore cannot read/write files.

The flash Stick works perfectly on other PC's which have Windows XP, but not this certain one.

However, when it does not recognise the physical drive, if i reboot the PC with the Kingston Data Traveller still inserted, the drive then appears. But if i insert it after the reboot, its not recognised???

Any suggestions?


Cheers

 

[Sandnscrap]

I got my flash drive working....Thanks!

Thanks alot for the info on making my flash drive work again. I reformated an old computer I had & stupidly left the new flash drive my brother gave me in the usb port so it really messed it up. Doing a search on the Internet brought up this TechSpot site & lots of information. I tried several things but to no avail. This morning I found your post & tried this part of your instructions:
"II. an alternate solution for XP users is to go into
Control panel , admin tools, computer management, disk management
and right click on the letter of the flash drive that is not working
format it. (this will low level format the drive.) XP views the drive as a hard disk."
The only thing is I don't understand this part:
"Use the Computer Manager - Storage- Disk Management Utility In Xp. High Light the Removable Drive and reallocate the space and Format the drive. Your total space may be smaller and you may need to do this again with the correct space amount."
What do you mean by "total space"? If this flash drive is a 1GB, is that the total space?
This forum is great!
Thanks again,
Sand

 

[caravel]

If the USB flash drive is detected but then the volume itself fails to mount, there are a few reasons why this can happen. I have found that in most cases it's due to the flash drive containing inferior quality nvram. In other caes it's due to mishandling. The solder can often crack inside, where the usb connecor is fixed to the pcb, this causes the device insertion "bell" to sound, but the drive itself doesn't appear in windows explorer. Better quality drives tend to be more expensive, so if you're quite pleased at yourself for getting a 1GB drive for £10.00 expect to be disappointed soon. These things are being pumped out of asia non stop with little thought for quality control, to supply the recent USB flash stick craze.

 

[serkansi]

Problem about DataTraveler in Win98

I just purchased a Kingston DataTraveler 1 GB U3 Smart.
I use win 98 operating system in my computer.
I tried everything, but could not achieve to travel with it
I installed driver for win98se (mine) from kingston website.
But, after installing, they are shown as 0 byte. So completing the driver installation through my computer fails again. There are 2 0-byte drivers and one safe-eject file (inactive) in the data traveler 2.0 folder in program files.
Please help me, I will appreciate this..

 

[Tedster]

more than likely you need USB 2.0.
With windows 98 you're probably running at 1.1.

 

[Simpleid]

Interesting discovery on USB Flash drive problems

On a windows XP system my flash drive would not show under my computer, after following the instruction to reformat the drive within computer management I noted something interesting! The drive was attempting to use a drive letter which was already assigned to a mapped network location!!

Simply reassigning a new unused drive letter made it appear under my computer!

Bam!

 

[jeth]

HP USB flash drive problems

I wanted to try your idea of remapping my drive to another letter, but I couldn't figure out how to do it. But first, let me describe my USB flash drive problem fully.

I have two HP v100w 4G flash drives which are recognized fine on my Gateway laptop, but not on my Gateway desktop, both running Windows XP.

When I plug the drives into the desktop, I briefly see the popup window asking me what I would like to do with the drive, but then it disappears and if I try to access the drive I get a windows saying the drive is inaccessible.

At this point after removing all the USB ports and letting Windows reinstall them on the new boot, I can still see the name of the drive. Originally, that also disappeared when the other popup did.

I've tried front and back ports and even tried using a separate USB card, but these two drives fail there as well.

At one point Gateway suggested the USB support on the board was bad. But none of the other flash drives I have are having any troubles. And other USB devices such as an external hard drive, X-10 controller, Blood Pressure monitor and cordless phone setup application are all working fine.

I'm going to keep digging to see if maybe I also have a leftover drive assignment that is causing a conflict, but I don't see it anywhere yet.

 

[LookinAround]

Refer to this troubleshooting guide for USB drives
=> You may want to start with Part1 and go through initial steps to confirm all is ok
=> Part2 provides instructions to change drive letters

 

[jeth]

USB flash drive trubleshooting

Thanks for response....

That gives me a lot of things to try, so I am going to print it out so I can go through those steps carefully. I have probably done a lot of them already, but not necessarily in the same order, so it won't hurt to try again.

 

[LookinAround]

Glad to help. If you have any questions or need any assistance just post and let us know!