256MB Flash Drive NOT recognized

[rakesh15]

My PC is DELL , win XP, new computer and all good and working.

I bought 256 MB PNY - attache Flash drive which was working good, and had some files in it. worked well for 10+ months.

I used it to a damaged HD computer
and something was over written there,
and now that flash drive is not recognized any where,
I tried in many computers, many times.

In explorer it shows as removable drive with letter H,
but I can not open or format it.

I cant do disk defrag, format, open or nothing. ( tried with 2-3 diff computers)

If I right click on H and say property, it shows as RAW ! should not it be FAT?

How do I get back in FAT system? Any software to format this flash drive? its PNY.

How do I fix it and get back to FAT, or make it recognized?

MY pc is working with other flash drives pretty good and have NO driver problems.

Pl. help how to format this flash drive and make it FAT from RAW, I am ready to lose the data, but want to get it working.

THx.

[batty_professor]

Hi, and welcome to TSF. Since this item is treated as a drive, it has to be looked at as having a partition. That partition is identified as having an MBR (Master Boot Record), a way of keeping track of the arrangement of the filesystem therein. If that MBR gets corrupted or overwritten, then any files there can't be found. You will need to repair the partition, or replace it if it can't be recovered. If you can repair, then you can read the files again. If it comes down to re-partitioning, then the files will be lost, and you will need also to re-format the drive. When working with the partitioning and format tools, be sure you are addressing this drive and this drive only.

[rakesh15]

Dear BP:

Thx for the explanation and I am convinced that the MBR has corrupted.

Would U pl. also show the solution, step by step?
I am ready to format the drive ( flash) , but it does not allow me to do so !

How do I repartition it? What shoud I do? Pl advise.

Do I need to enter the WIN XP Cd and do the partition of that flash drive again? How?

Pray tell me step by step.

I have NO CD that came with flash drive.
Nor any help is there on PNY web site except the drivers for win 98 System.

I checked my system drivers which are fine, as I have other same kind of drives which work fine.


Pl. suggest the solution.

Thx.

[batty_professor]

Since you're using Windows XP and to my knowledge there are utilities within XP that should do as you need, I will move this to that forum.

[ScottC]

First, please make sure that your USB Flash Drive is connected to the PC.

You should then click on "Start" then "Run". In the small window that was opened type "diskmgmt.msc" (without the quotes of course).

This will open up Disk Management window which should show your Had Drive, CD-ROM(s) and the USB Flash Drive. You should be able to right click the USB Drive letter (I think that you said it was appearing as "H") and create a partition on it. Once there is a partition, you can format it back to the FAT file system.

I hope that helps.

[rakesh15]

Thx all 4 help.
I solved the problem.

For others, here is what I did.

Called toll free to PNY( Flash drive Company) and they immediately knew the problem of having deleted the Memory boot record chip and e- mailed me a Zip file.
I executed it and it found automatically my flash drive and formatted the chip in its MBR.

There after WIN could recognize it and WIN formatted it again, its own way and all done.

Coclusion: Call the company ,they have more knowledge and they know exact solution. Thx all.

[smoky1973]

R U There?

[rezac]

I have SanDisk Cruzer Contour 16 Gig. I turned shutdown my computer while the flash drive was in one of the USB prots. The next day the computer has error message that the USB device not recognized. What could I do about it?