Has anyone had a usb flash drive crash before. I am getting the error saying that it is not formatted just like when a floppy goes bad or insert disk into drive F: ( the drive letter the crusier is assinged to). This thing hasn't been abused it does however get used a lot, it is about 2 years old.

Do you see it in my computer?

yes, it does show up in my computer but it cant access the data.

Try to read it with DSL or Knoppix

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linu [...] sl-2.4.iso

http://www.kernel.org/pub/dist/kno [...] -01-EN.iso


It's possible the FS got corrupted on the flash got worn out.

Good luck :-D

Can U format it?
There was one problem with one memory of one man.
I plug it in and go to see what is on it and there was nothing, but something was on it when you look at properties.

The thing was there was a bunch of files so much that it freezes and cant show them all,... formating it was the solution.

If U can format it format it, but if that is not the case i cant help U any more.

GrTz!

Formatting it will also reduce your ability to recover data from it.




@OP if you hope to recover the data from the memory stick please do not format it or try to write to it.

Use DSL or Knoppix to make an image of it and then you can format it if you like.

Formatting it will also reduce your ability to recover data from it.




@OP if you hope to recover the data from the memory stick please do not format it or try to write to it.

Use DSL or Knoppix to make an image of it and then you can format it if you like.


Shure thing

My San Disk did the same thing after about a year.
Thank God the semester was over.

I also had the same thing with my Sandisk Micro Cruzer. It just failed one time and every other sector on it went bad. Scandisk recovered some fragments but it was pretty much shot. Now it won't read at all. I lost some important documents which were only stored there because I thought that was the safest place for them...

Thanks for the advice, its nice to know that I'm not the only one that has run into this problem. I really wasn't expecting this thing to go out I am really surprised.

:-( All flash will eventually wear out. It's just the way flash works I'm afraid.

Yes, but some faster than others, I don't think 9 months infrequent use is reasonable from what was an expensive stick from a premium brand.

It depends on luck, the quality of the chips used and usage.

Yes, I agree. I'm not saying that this is representative of all Sandisk products but as one of the world's top flash manufacturers you would think it would be better. Anyway, I'm aware that failure rates follow a normal distribution curve, so the MTBF is about the middle of that and if you're unlucky yours fails before MTBF and lucky if it lasts longer.

Its always good to have information like that stored in more than one location

Its always good to have information like that stored in more than one location



Indeed it is very important to have multiple redundant backups on multiple media, ideally using different storage technologies.

Yeah, I'm well aware of that. It was some files which needed to remain securely in my possession with no chance of anyone else getting it. Ironically, now no-one can get to them... took me ages to rebuild those databases and spreadsheets. Anyway, now I store them on my laptop and desktop but encrypt them.

Did you try to read them with Knoppix?

Can't be doing with that stuff, anyway the stick died well over a year ago and I don't know where it's gone since then. It's completely dead now and appears as an unrecognised USB device.