USB Thumb Drive dead

[djbourne]

Can anyone help. I think my Thumb drive is dead. It is recognised (windows XP system) and given a drive letter but the file system reads as RAW and shows 0 as both sizes. It wont allow me to format it.

Can anyone help (other than throw it away)

 

[Sympology]

Not sure if this link is still valid (blocked from work)

http://files.filefront.com/SP27608exe/;9868201;/fileinfo.html

If not try to look for HP's USB drive utility.

Most people spend their time on the "urgent" rather than on the "important."

 

[Sympology]

Sorry should of mention, it's helped me recover a drive and reformat a Linux formated drive.

Most people spend their time on the "urgent" rather than on the "important."

 

[xwb]

Did you try formatting it with XP? If you did, you should have specified FAT32. One of the most common problems with thumb drives is that they get formatted as NTFS and nothing can read them after that.

 

[djbourne]

Thanks for the replies. I tried the download but get the message there is no media in the drive.

I tried formating in Windows as FAT (the only option) but it fails. Any other ideas as I would rather not just throw it away.

 

[djbourne]

I also tried chkdsk but it cant check raw format.

 

[Grenage]

My experience with windows isn't great; do you have a linux live CD? You could download one (such as knoppix) and format it there. From the command prompt:

dmesg |tail (view output and identify USB drive)
sudo umount /dev/sda (where sda is the USB drive)
sudo mkfs.vfat -n ‘yourlabel’ -I /dev/sda (where sda is USB drive)

Remove and reinsert keyring.

"We can categorically state that we have not released man-eating badgers into the area" - Major Mike Shearer

 

[goombawaho]

Not to pile on, butttttt...... Those memory sticks/thumb drives are not as reliable as you'd like to think they are. Think of them as more reliable than an old floppy disk, but not nearly as reliable as a hard drive or a CD/DVD.

 

[wahnula]

I saw a 4GB thumb drive for $8...those can't be that reliable. I use my Mom's "tires and brakes" rule of thumb for memory...don't scrimp on any of them, you get what you pay for.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah and even the expensive ones are not a substitute for another form of backup. There's Mozy (online backup), CDs, DVDs, external hard drives, even multiple USB memory sticks. Anything to duplicate your data storage.

It's amazing how, when things go wrong, your backup method just doesn't seem to be what you had hoped. So, overkill is the answer if you value your data.

Personally, I still use an internal tape backup, I use Mozy to backup the smaller files and I keep a copy of my music on another computer's hard drive.

 

[djbourne]

Thank you to those who had ideas about recovering the drive but i think it is dead.