Computer killing flash drives - please help

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chestercheeto48

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Hey everyone I have a quick question that is stumping me and driving my wife to tears. We purchased a new laptop for her back in August and since then it has "killed" three different model/size flash drives. She will be using the drive all day perfectly then all of a sudden the computer will not recognize or open the drive saying that it needs to be reformatted. The first time I could pop it in my work machine and get the contents off of it. This last time (last night) it wouldn't work. She has her entire school porfolio on it (due tomorrow) and some other items. None of it is irreplacible - she would just have to redo some stuff.

Here are my two questions:

Any way to get the info off of the drive without reformatting? Properties say the drive is full but that there are zero bytes on it.

Is the laptop killing these drives? Should I take it back to Costco or call the manufacturer? I read somewhere that Windows 7 home edition has been buggy with flash drives but I am in not sure where to start.......
 
that sucks for her... i've had the same problem w/ a flash drive.. transferred a ton of pics to it and only about a 1/3 were there.. folders were there for the pics, but no pics
 
never heard that happening as a result of a bad computer...

always turns out to be cheap/shit flash drives :(
 
Yeah - I have had that happen with cheap flash drives too. The thing that worries me is that three of them have stopped working since August. They all need to be reformatted and then they work again. All different brands with different sizes. I have seen some items on the web regarding Windows 7 home editions but as soon as the article gets technical I start to lose what they are talking about......
 
try this...with the computer on...plug in the flash drive, then shut down, take the flash drive out and reboot. When windows loads, plug the flash drive back in,...did it recognize it with asking to reformat?
 
Go into My Computer with the flash drive plugged in and get the drive letter Windows is assigning it.

Open a command prompt with administrator priveledges (start > accessories > rt-click command prompt and click run as admin) and type the following:

chkdsk f: /r

Replace f with whichever letter her computer is assigning to the flash drive.

This may not do anything, but it could correct file system issues that are preventing windows from seeing the files. Depends on what the problem is.

Also, is she ejecting the flash drive before pulling it from the USB port? Flash drives are terrible about corrupting data if they aren't ejected properly. Always make sure to right-click the Eject Media icon in the system tray (near the clock, looks like a USB cable with a green circle and checkmark next to it) and eject the drive to force windows to unmount the volume so it doesn't become corrupted.
 
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for real though, try this

sledgehammer.jpg
 
Battle Pope said:
Go into My Computer with the flash drive plugged in and get the drive letter Windows is assigning it.

Open a command prompt with administrator priveledges (start > accessories > rt-click command prompt and click run as admin) and type the following:

chkdsk f: /r

Replace f with whichever letter her computer is assigning to the flash drive.

This may not do anything, but it could correct file system issues that are preventing windows from seeing the files. Depends on what the problem is.

Also, is she ejecting the flash drive before pulling it from the USB port? Flash drives are terrible about corrupting data if they aren't ejected properly. Always make sure to right-click the Eject Media icon in the system tray (near the clock, looks like a USB cable with a green circle and checkmark next to it) and eject the drive to force windows to unmount the volume so it doesn't become corrupted.
Click to expand...


Thanks I will try this tonight when I get home. BTW she is religous about ejecting the usb stuff so I am thinking that isn't the issue.

Thanks to everyone so far for the advice!
 
Why is she loosing the info? What I mean by that is...Is she working off of the flash drive? IMO she should be working and saving to the hard drive on the computer. After she finishes working and saves her work, then she can save the file to the flash drive. This will prevent the loss of information. If the flash drive takes a dump, then she can just get another, or reformat and resave. She will not lose work this way, just time.
 
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wikedeye said:
Why is she loosing the info? What I mean by that is...Is she working off of the flash drive? IMO she should be working and saving to the hard drive on the computer. After she finishes working and saves her work, then she can save the file to the flash drive. This will prevent the loss of information. If the flash drive takes a dump, then she can just get another, or reformat and resave. She will not lose work this way, just time.
Click to expand...


I have been telling her that for years. Wife = stubborn
 
Tell her she can either continue to periodically lose her data at extremely inconvenient times, or start using flash drives correctly. They are designed to transport and back up files, not used as a working directory.
 
Battle Pope said:
Tell her she can either continue to periodically lose her data at extremely inconvenient times, or start using flash drives correctly. They are designed to transport and back up files, not used as a working directory.
Click to expand...


I am pretty sure she learned her lesson this last time. If not she at least learned to not tell me when it happens again. "can't fix stupid":ph34r:
 
go to makers website, there might be a BIOS or driver fix.

also, to retrieve info, get testdisk. it will scan the drive and look for partitions or files. dont reformat or write ANYTHING to that drive and it will recover the file. however, if you've done either of the two, it might not work. also, its DOS based, but its not too hard to figure out. its helped me recover files from a 1tb hard drive that just crashed.

goodluck.
 
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