is this the right thread - flash drive

[PROFESSORSPARKIE]

I have had 3 out of 6 different flash drives that seem to just become unrecognizable. I always select the unload icon down in the quick start tray before I take them out.

Someof my flash drives are just not recognized and sometimes the system identifies it then gives a driver missing. they are 3 different manufacturers.

I wonder if I might have deleted some hidden files or over loaded the directory.

Can they be initialized again?

I have backups of most of the data but hate going through determining what is on the drives. The additional help message is not helpful.

Any help is appreciated.

Computer thought: I teach a lot of programming so I can learn. You can never learn it all.

 

[vacunita]

This is the Video issues forum, as in Grpahics cards and adapters. You want the forum750 or forum751


In any case.

We need more information. Operating system you are running. Make and model of the drives involved.

Then we can start to diagnose the problem.

----------------------------------
Ignorance is not necessarily Bliss, case in point:
Unknown has caused an Unknown Error on Unknown and must be shutdown to prevent damage to Unknown.

 

[BadBigBen]

and do not forget to mention if you are plugging them in the from USB or the back USB ports...

mainboard used...



Ben

"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."

How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.

 

[BFOJ]

Right-click on My Computer (XP) or Computer (Vista), select Manage, Disk Management, see if the USB drive shows up, if so, check the status. If may be offline or may require initialization and more.

The three USB drives, have you tried them on another computer?

 

[PROFESSORSPARKIE]

To: BFOJ

From the first comment,

"Someof my flash drives are just not recognized and sometimes the system identifies it then gives a driver missing. they are 3 different manufacturers.

I wonder if I might have deleted some hidden files or over loaded the directory.

Can they be initialized again?"

Are there some programs that you can give the hex physical address and then run the init program on them.

Example "specialformatter x'1AC'

where 1AC is the physical hardware location of a particular USB slot on the system board mask. Example each of the LPT1-4, COM1-3 etc have a hex address for hardware level init of those devices.
A bare HD drive formater program for MS vs MAC use.


Computer thought: I teach a lot of programming so I can learn. You can never learn it all.

 

[BFOJ]

So what were the results of viewing them in Disk Management? Now I'm not talking about Device Manager.

 

[PROFESSORSPARKIE]

To: BFOJ & others,

Sorry, I have been very busy and did not get back ASAP.

My SYSTEMs do not recognize the drives. There is an initial recognition that I plugged them in then a rejection and they do not show up on any Windows(Disk Management or Device Management) screen. Even at a command level they are not recognized so I can't use the FORMAT command.

As I said earlier, I was looking for a "bare" drive format program like you can use on a hard drive if you want to change the physical formatting. we use to do that back in earlier days if we had a Windows physical format to a Mac physical format. I am talking about formatting below/before the OS level like the FAT of NFS or etc formatting used by the operating systems. We also used to do this for performance by changing the sector writing sequence on the track. If someone hasn't been into PCs way back in the earlier 1980s then you may not even know about this level of formatting.

As I said earlier I can recover from these problems(in fact I have) but I am starting to worry about the integrity of such devices.

I just purchased a 32-gig USB for $49, and as the devices get larger the need for better integrity/recovery goes up.

I guess I will just have to hope that device recovery software will improve to save these drives if the problem is only in formatting.

THANKS again to everyone for your concerns.

professorsparkie

Computer thought: I teach a lot of programming so I can learn. You can never learn it all.