Problem with a flash drive - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

SiNai · 04-14-2005, 09:45 PM

While trying to help a friend reformat their laptop, I accidently wiped both their hard drive AND my flash drive (it was plugged in at the time, I wasn't paying attention..). Crap. Windows doesn't know anything about my flash drive now. Doesn't want to format it. It gives me an error that it wasn't able to complete the format right away. I thought maybe why it wasn't formatting is because I'm trying to format it in FAT (the only choice) but I think most of these are NTFS (??). Any help? Can't find anything on the net to help..

sashime76 · 04-15-2005, 04:53 AM

Norton System Suite - Disk Doctor got back some 100GB of data for a coworker. It works with both FAT and NTFS.

bendsley · 04-15-2005, 06:00 AM

Flash/Thumb drives are usually FAT32 format. Reason being because if you put it into a Windows98 machine, it won't recognize NTFS (at least newer versions).

liquidlight · 04-15-2005, 09:55 AM

What OS is running on the machine, and is your flash drive just a USB device?

One thing that you may need to consider with a clean format is that the machine may be missing USB driver information to maket he flashdrive communicate appropriately. For my Iomega flash drive there have been times that I've had to download the drivers for it before the computer would recognize it and allow me access. Or you just pooched the USB driver for that particular drive because you had it plugged in when the OS installed so now it thinks it's a hard drive instead of removable storage

04-14-2005, 09:45 PM	#1 (permalink)
SiNai Dreams In Digital Location: Iowa	Problem with a flash drive While trying to help a friend reformat their laptop, I accidently wiped both their hard drive AND my flash drive (it was plugged in at the time, I wasn't paying attention..). Crap. Windows doesn't know anything about my flash drive now. Doesn't want to format it. It gives me an error that it wasn't able to complete the format right away. I thought maybe why it wasn't formatting is because I'm trying to format it in FAT (the only choice) but I think most of these are NTFS (??). Any help? Can't find anything on the net to help.. __________________ I can't seem to remember now What it was like- to live life, before you.. symbiont

04-15-2005, 06:00 AM	#3 (permalink)
bendsley Professional Loafer Location: texas	Flash/Thumb drives are usually FAT32 format. Reason being because if you put it into a Windows98 machine, it won't recognize NTFS (at least newer versions). __________________ "You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

04-15-2005, 09:55 AM	#4 (permalink)
liquidlight AHH! Custom Title!! Location: The twisted warpings of my brain.	What OS is running on the machine, and is your flash drive just a USB device? One thing that you may need to consider with a clean format is that the machine may be missing USB driver information to maket he flashdrive communicate appropriately. For my Iomega flash drive there have been times that I've had to download the drivers for it before the computer would recognize it and allow me access. Or you just pooched the USB driver for that particular drive because you had it plugged in when the OS installed so now it thinks it's a hard drive instead of removable storage __________________ Halfway to hell and picking up speed.

04-15-2005, 04:53 AM	#2 (permalink)
sashime76 Addict Location: Hoosier State	Norton System Suite - Disk Doctor got back some 100GB of data for a coworker. It works with both FAT and NTFS.