USB drive or flash problems? How to cleanup and remove old USB storage drivers

Hi,
I am running Win 7 64bit SP1. I am currently facing the same problem with my SanDisk Cruzer. The problem started when I accidentally remove the thumb drive while its in operation and the whole episode unfolded. I tried using the method mentioned here but it seems like I am still facing the same problem which initially started on a 8Gb SanDisk Cruzer Edge thumbdrive and spread to a 16GB Cruzer Blade, 2 x 4GB Cruzer Micro and lastly a 16GB Cruzer Fit.... all these drives reported 0 bytes, no media.

Appreciate any advise...at my wits ends...contemplating of reformatting the HDD.

I had run these thumb drives on my office PC running Win XP 64-bit SP3...they ran fine....I tried to format them on my work PC, still facing the same problem when running from my home PC.

Below are snapshots of the problem.

Yes...forget to say...2 old SanDisk Cruzer Micro (1GB and 8GB) were still able to run fine.....

Just to clarify and to make sure I understand your posts
> All your SanDisk cruzers work on a different PC
> But only some fail on your home PC but work on others?

Question being if they ALL fail on just the home PC or if just a select few. And if the few that fail on home PC do or do not work on other PCs

Yes, basically all the new ones fail after I accidentally plug out one of them while the drive is in "activity"

Anyway, I reformatted my HDD and everything falls back in place again....must be some drivers that is stubbornly unable to be replaced except through a complete reformat of the HDD.

AndyChia

Thanks for taking the time to provide the update. Glad to hear you got your problem fixed!

OMG! I've been looking for something like this for ages!
Thankyou so much! I signed up in the page just to tell you this.

I also have registered here because of this topic singularly. I now reason that there is so much more I will realize and learn by coming to TechSpot.

Thank You LookinAround.

I will see if this is the solution, PowerSuite 2013 Pro is the trigger for the \Device\Harddisk\DR2 pop-up, and it is an intermittent issue. You should of seen the list of drives disabled, astonishing, I apologize for not grabbing an image of it.

Same problem here also. Using XP on this laptop where problem is. It does not happen on Windows 7 64 system. (USB 2TB WD External Hard Drive My Essentials).
If I plug in USB external hard drive on a new restart, it does recognize hard drive and drive F. If I plug USB hard drive into an already booted up XP system, it will not let me do anything. I have a free moving arrow that will not activate or click on any right click "start" button, will not click on any shortcut link on desktop. I have to do a hardstop to exit out of this. I did the following to try and correct this: I used diskcleanup and cleaned out all old USB Drivers; I also removed Acronis True Image and Acronis Disk Monitor from this computer (XP). Does anyone have any other ideas I can try?

As I said, it will work on this laptop XP computer if external hard drive USB is plugged into computer on a new bootup. I can see it in MY Documents as F drive. No problems with any shortcuts or programs running from desktop.

The problem is when I plug in after a computer has been booted up. If I put in USB cable, I get nothing. No response and no links or icons work for anything. Scrolling button used to stick in hour glass mode prior to removing program and cleaning old USB drivers. If I do a new bootup and as I said, USB hard drive is working, and if I take it out, and then put back in, same thing happens even though it was working prior to taking out. Only works on new bootup.

I have tested this USB hard drive on another laptop running Windows 7 64, and no problems. Works either way and I get the autoplay menu also, which I don't get even on a new startup in XP. Something is corrupt in the XP system and I don't know where to look. I can only share that one time I hit to remove USB driver safely, I got a screen with 3 choices that came up and said which one did I want to stop. My guess is the problem lies here with these 3 choices. One was a generic F drive controller or something like that, the other was the USB hard drive, and I can't remember what the third process was, as I have not seen that screen again.

thanks as I have already ruined one external USB hard drive due to so many improper shutdowns/

thanks and need help badly as I cannot solve this and am running out of ideas short of a new image of
XP put back on, and that is allot of work to catch up to the present.

Hi all,

I just want to share with you people if you face such issue it could be due to the Smartphone software (such as Samsung Kies).
I have verified this...after uninstalling this software, all the SanDisk Cruzer thumbdrives are able to work again.

Please refer to the forum below to understand more.
http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/All-Sa...while-it-shows-in-computer/td-p/285020/page/6

I was having similar problems as the original thread creator. My Seagate external has been working for a few years and was working Friday night, but not Saturday morning. The green light signifies it is getting power and I can hear the spinning and sometimes a few clicks, but the drive doesn't show up in My Computer now. I attached an image showing what I see during the hardware detection and within 'Computer Management'. (64-bit Windows7)

I followed the instructions above for DriveCleaner which removed an extra 33 items from the registry but I'm still having the same problem. There is a lot of precious content on here I would like recover so I can at least back it up somewhere else. Any suggestions?

Disk Management shows the disk is unallocated. (Might be due to corruption so Windows no longer sees a valid partition or file system.) However, doesn't mean your data is lost.

Try running PhotoRec
Try using PhotoRec with its default options (you only need Enter). Two things to be certain of:
1. Choose the right disk that needs scanning
2. When it asks you where to write the recovered files, do NOT! point to the drive you are trying to recover! If you write anything to that drive, it can overwrite data that might otherwise be recovered.

G;luck. Let us know how it goes <will keep fingers crossed>

/* EDIT */
p.s. 2. above also means you need a drive with enough free space to save all data you hope to recover! (so if you may need to connect a 2nd external if not enough space on your local disk)

Just so I don't make a big mistake and rush this... I the Drive I selected to scan was my Seagate. Now it shows a screen that lists Partition: P Unknown with a size of sectors listed. I don't see where it is asking for the destination before I scan. It just has options for Search (Start Recovery), Options and File Options but no destination path listed. Should I proceed with Start Recovery or is that going to write to my Seagate?

Also, the drive has hundreds of gigs of files. Is this the best way to try and access the contents? Thanks in advance!

Ok, I'll have to grab a new hard drive to restore to before I try this, may be another week or two. Thanks for your help!

Another questions regarding the same issue... I noticed my Windows Update isn't updating anymore either. It will scan for updates and hang on 0% infinitely. During this process, it also dramatically slows down my system until I CNTRL+ALT+DEL and stop the Windows Update service. Is there any chance if I do a complete OS reinstall, that may help access my external HD? I've read you can get a lot of USB bug fixes via Windows Update and am wondering if missing those could be affecting me as well.

Ok, I started to run the PhotoRec. After I selected my damaged drive (Seagate external), I am presented with the menu shown in the attached file. I did not see a prompt asking where I would like to recover my files TO. Should I proceed or not yet?

The hard drive I would like to restore to is verrrry close in size to the hard drive I'm trying to recover, but I'm not 100% positive sure it is larger than the files I am trying to recover. Is this why it has not asked me for a destination drive to recover to, or does that happen on the next screen? Im too afraid to proceed if I am unsure....

1. Not to worry about disk destination size. Since PhotoRec doesn't change anything on the disk it's recovering, you can always start again if you need more space

2. As to the screens, I only used PhotoRec once, myself. You'll see the typical sequence of screens on PhotoRec Step by Step Guide.
In my case, for whatever reason, not all the screens appeared

That screenshot is the one that precedes the one allowing you to tell it what file types to recover. By default, all file types will be chosen. Just hit enter again to let it try to recover all file types. You eventually get to the screen that asks where to save recovered files. That one you want to pick drive you added.

It just finished and recovered 0 files
Thanks anyways for the help, I really do appreciate it.
I've tried everything I can think of but I guess I just have to swallow the fact that I've lost 5-10 years worth of content.

You said you have hundreds of gigs on the drive yet the usb drive only shows 4GB. Are you not mistaken an external hdd with a usb stick?
You should try TestDisk to find lost partition table on the drive first. If it's true the ext. drive is only 4GB, it must be very old. I guess your problem is not due to the filtering problem but your disk's age (bad sectors). There's way to recover dying harddisk by freezing it first and then try to get as much content as possible from the drive's still not damaged sectors. Not guaranteed successful though.

I'm not using any USB sticks. That's very interesting you mentioned freezing it. My buddy just told me that a few days ago and I couldn't believe it. Ok, I'll try TestDisk first and if the drive is only 4GB, I'll try the freezer. Thanks again for the help!

I'll test the ext drive on another computer first, to make sure what the actual problem is: the ext drive or your computer. Also check the event viewer for errors (disk bad block or controller error) to confirm bad disk problem. If you later decide to try the freezing stuff, take care of condensation. You also have limited time to work on the disk before it's heating up again. Anyway this has to go to a new thread I guess. Good luck.