Death of a Flash Drive

[cduma]

My flash drive just died. I am almost certain the write limit has not been reached. the blinky light is nolonger blinky. it just stays lit.
Its a 4gb bought on eCrack errr, eBay from a 99% seller.
There are no logos on the drive
Please send help! It has all my hard won linux distros from 3KBps servers



the flash chip is
samsung 719
K9WCG08U5M
PCB*[*either zero or oh cant tell]
FED668X3

and the UC is
Create [never heard of this manufacturer]
i5128-LG
T736
CE7703.0

 

[kimsland]

HP USB Disk Storage Format Utility
Http://downloads.pcworld.com/pub/new/utilities/peripherals/SP27608.exe

Will format any USB flash drive
It can be known to recover Flash drives that are un-responsive too.

WARNING: This will format (lose all info) on your drive. But may fix it!

For recovery (before format) first try another computer
Then search for USB drive data recovery programs from Google

 

[Matthew DeCarlo]

If it won't work on other USB ports or other PC's, and your "blinky light" is no longer "blinky" odds are it is indeed broken. You can try and run a chkdsk on the drive, but I doubt it will do anything if you aren't getting a response from it.

Flash drives are far from the most reliable devices, I would advise against trusting them with any critical data unless you have it backed up elsewhere.