Damaged/corrupted flashdrive!!! Please help!!!

sand_man

sand_man

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Have half a dozen of these.

What sometimes happens is, for various reasons a large file transfer gets interrupted, the flashdrive gets removed and the net result is a faulty flashdrive/external hardrive.

Windows 7 recognizes a device with removable storage but there is no way to actually interact with said device.

No formatting using cmd and diskpart, no formatting via right click and format, no formatting via computer management interface!!

I can rename it, change the drive letter etc etc etc but Windows doesn't recognize it as a drive!!

So bloody frustrating!!

Any potential solutions???
 
Live Linux CD

Boot it up, plug the flash drive in, copy all relevant data off.

Then use gparted (or any other partition damagers) to delete old partition and create new one + format.

edit : is it always the same PC and same USB port that is causing you this grief?

edit2: can't you RAR said file, create small 50Mb (or whatever) sized files, copy all these to the flash drive, and reassemble on the other side?


edit3: if you copy data off, copy it to another fixed storage system, such as your internal HDD, or external HDD....
 
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The_Librarian said:
Live Linux CD

Boot it up, plug the flash drive in, copy all relevant data off.

Then use gparted (or any other partition damagers) to delete old partition and create new one + format.

edit : is it always the same PC and same USB port that is causing you this grief?

edit2: can't you RAR said file, create small 50Mb (or whatever) sized files, copy all these to the flash drive, and reassemble on the other side?
Click to expand...

No, this has happened on 3 different machines and is more a symptom and consequence of my impatience!! I sometimes hit cancel while doing a large file transfer (sometimes 100's of gb), when I percieve it to be taking to long. Then, the cancelling window stays open for ages which further irriates me so I manually remove the external drive and that's usually when things crash!!

Today I lost a flashdrive not in this usual process though. I had files copying over and had left my desk for about 30 minutes. When I got back I had some error message on screen stating that the transfer could not complete blah blah blah and my drive has been "offline" since!!

Have zero experience with Linux btw...
 
I might add, I'm not concerned about the data currently on the drive, more getting it working again... gparted??
 
That strikes me as a little unusual.

Pulling the stick halfway through should corrupt the data not break the stick.

Try using the windows disk manager to get rid of the unpartition it maybe?
 
HavocXphere said:
That strikes me as a little unusual.

Pulling the stick halfway through should corrupt the data not break the stick.

Try using the windows disk manager to get rid of the unpartition it maybe?
Click to expand...
In my experience if gparted can't see it that's pretty much it :(

Edit: assuming the USB port is OK of course.
 
It's very weird. I'm at a bit of a loss. If it was a once off I could write it off as a dud drive but it's been about 4 in the last 4 months. On 3 different machines!! Not sure if a virus could do this sort of damage but I doubt it. Voltage issue on a particular USB port, sure but that doesn't explain why it's happened on 3 different machines.
 
Same batch of flashes? Sounds like faulty hardware. Software rarely has the snuff to break hardware that well
 
Sorry to disappoint gents but I've done 1 x 8gb corsair, 1 x 64gb patriot and a 256gb 2.5" seagate!!
 
What worked for me several times was to just disconnect the PC from the power source and then re-connect again after a few seconds. It sort of flushes the USB port or something like that. Try it and it might also work for you. :)
 
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