Unable to open a 4Gig Flash Drive

[native]

Just acquired a 4gig Sony flash drive USB 2.0

Inserting the flash drive into the machine, it appears under my computer as a removable disk but trying to open it just tells me "please insert disk in drive E:."
Other USB 2.0 devices can work on that port

Tried it in 3 different machine same results:

 

[ebendl]

Just acquired a 4gig Sony flash drive USB 2.0

Inserting the flash drive into the machine, it appears under my computer as a removable disk but trying to open it just tells me "please insert disk in drive E:."
Other USB 2.0 devices can work on that port

Tried it in 3 different machine same results:

If you purchased it, I would take it back and demand a new one/refund. Sounds quite broken to me. You can have a look under the Windows administrative tools-->Computer Managament-->Disk Manager if you can't get it to work from there, but I doubt it.

 

[zefram]

Have you tried formatting it?

 

[native]

If you purchased it, I would take it back and demand a new one/refund. Sounds quite broken to me. You can have a look under the Windows administrative tools-->Computer Managament-->Disk Manager if you can't get it to work from there, but I doubt it.

Tried that it didnt work.

Have you tried formatting it?

Error = There is no disk in drive E.
Insert a disk, and then try again.

 

[Person]

Take it back, get them to replace it.

 

[native]

Take it back, get them to replace it.

I think a refund will do

 

[Juggy]

Look online for the software for the drive. Failing that goto disk management and write a signature on the device so windows can address it.

 

[Darth Garth]

Did you buy it from a reputable vendor ???.

This thread just helped me fix a faulty 'Sony 4GB' flash drive a mate of mine imported from China late last year, for a ridiculously low price. So I thought i'd add to the information here with my experiences.

The thing broke almost immediately after I started using it. I was a bit wary of it being dodgey to begin with, so I did some copy tests, to see if it really was 4gb. First file copied on then back off no problems but was only a few megabytes. When I tried to copy a 600mb CD image on to it, it didn't take very long at all to stop working. It just stopped responding. After this happened, whenever it was plugged into any windows XP machine, it would show up as a 'Removable Drive' and get assigned a drive letter, but trying to open or access it in any way caused "Insert a disk" messages. Trying to format it using windows, or computer management caused "Device not ready" messages. Every other 'reformat' tool had similar issues, windows clearly new something was very wrong.

At first PortFree didn't appear to work, but I kept trying with random attempts with different settings - and ultimately reformatted it and got it working. I believe the 'low level format' was the kicker, as once this was performed, the drive pretty much started working properly.

The result? 16Mb of flash drive goodness! Woohooo! Glad I didn't pay anything for the damn thing.

I havent got a photo, but the thing is tiny, rectangluar, about 4cm x 1.5cm x 05.cm, 'brushed silver' plastic with black plastic ends and plug cover. Its printed with the Vaio logo on one side, and the Sony logo, a USB 2.0 logo and a "4GB" marking on the other side, all in a shinier silver than the casing. I opened it up and found an iCreate i5062-zd controller, and a Hynix hy27us08281a 16M flash chip.

In conclusion, don't pay real money for this dodgey s**t! If it sounds too good to be true, it almost always is!

Oh, djwongdj, i'm fairly sure you only have 16Mb worth of flash memory in your stick. The "2Gb" partition is fake, and I think it's fairly safe to assume that it won't work at all, because there simply isn't 2Gb worth of flash memory in the thing, but only 16Mb. To check for sure, pry it open, and google the serial number on the big chip. If you can find the tech-specs for the chip, you should be able to find how much memory it contains