Is my USB flash drive dead?

J

JimmiG

2[H]4U
Joined
Apr 3, 2008
Messages
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So I was trying to create a bootable image of Ubuntu on my 4GB USB flash drive so I could reinstall it on my Netbook. The process failed for some reason and now I can't access the drive.
When I click on it in My Computer (in Vista on my desktop rig) it just sais "Please insert a disk into Removable Disk H:" :rolleyes: So I can't just reformat the drive. I've also tried using the Disk management tool but I can't repartition the drive because there's no media in the drive according to the tool.

Is the drive busted or can it be low-level formatted or something? If it's broken, why do you think it happened? Did the live usb creator destroy the drive, or are the memory cells simply worn out? The drive is about 5 months old, but I've been using it quite a bit. Still, I thought even the cheapest flash cells could be written to thousands of times?
 
If you cant's redo the partition via disk management, then it's probably dead. How long is the warranty? Most of my flash drives have a 5-10 year warranty. Another thing to try, is buy a SDHC card with lifetime warranty, and a USB adapter, so if you ever wear the memory out, you can send it in for replacement.
 
That kind of sucks... Wonder why it died so soon, after only 5 months of normal use? Makes me kind of worried about the life span of the SSD in my netbook, seeing as I bought it at the same time as the USB drive :eek:

I'm pretty sure it's still under warranty since I've only had it for 5 months. I'll take it to the store on monday. It's just that I've only got this one USB drive and my Netbook is already reformatted so I can't use it until I get a new flash drive...no web browsing from the couch tonight :(
 
Did you try 'diskpart' from a cmd prompt in Vista or Disk Management ?

diskpart..
list disk<enter>
select disk ? <enter> (? = drive number of the flash drive)
clean<enter>
exit<enter>
 
dbwillis said:
Did you try 'diskpart' from a cmd prompt in Vista or Disk Management ?

diskpart..
list disk<enter>
select disk ? <enter> (? = drive number of the flash drive)
clean<enter>
exit<enter>
Click to expand...

It's listed with a capacity of 0B in the drive list, and when I type Clean, it just tells me there's no media in the drive.
 
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