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Community Newsletter: Q&A: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?!
- 5/23/08 4:31 PM
FLASH DRIVE DEAD
by SUNRISER1 - 12/4/08 7:15 AM In reply to: IMHO... by WillyMy flash drive (2 gb) worked fine until one day when suddenly stopped responding it. Until that day I worked whit it whitout dismounting it but taking care that no active program work on it (Total commander, Word etc.) and in that day the acces led of my flash drive stopped flashing - no power goes in ??? - I tryed on 2 pc's on all USB port at work and home and nothing. The cellphone was in the other pocket. I tryed to boot from it, no way! Wasn't even detected. Windows XP it not detect it, it not assign a drive letter for it. Please advice, I want to save the data from my drive. Who can help me make this flashdrive work?
Dead Flash Drives - USB power is low.
by stevematt - 5/19/08 3:04 AM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
From my experience of flash drives working on some PCs but not others. It seems this might be because the USB port is not supplying enough power.
I've had one flash drive that went faulty. It's got some file corruption on it. It can be read from but not written to or re-formatted.
John.
Apparently failing flash-drives...
by keiling - 5/19/08 11:37 AM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
First, your drives may not really be failing, but they may not be recognized because you do not have an available (not used) drive letter, immediately following all drives that are internally installed. For example after your C-drive, you may also have a D-drive, followed by a CD/DVD E-drive. befor any other drives used for netwroks, yo must have an unused drive letter (F in this example), that the computer can use for removable flash-drives, etc. Re-map, if necessary to have an unused drive letter at that position.
Second, with XP and probably with VISTA, too, it is not necessary to use the Safely Remove Hardware option. On older Windows O/S it is a needed step.
I have a similar problem
by chuckles-s - 5/19/08 12:44 PM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have a very similar problem with flash drives on my Shuttle computer, but not on others. No amount of rebooting or invoking the "safely remove hardware" dialog will fix the problem. Only powering down and rebooting fixes the problem. I believe it is a start-up problem with the ATI chipset, which has had a number of documented problems. The same problem also occurrs with music transfers to MP3 players using the USB connection. However, this won't explain finding your problem on 6 computers unless they all are the same brand.
Had a similar problem with my Sandisk ConnectPlus 128MB CF
by roland827 - 5/20/08 7:26 AM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
This is a Compactflash memory card with WIFI capabilities... It was working on my IPAQ 3670 and then the 128MB card just quit... the Wifi part is still working, but the memory part's just showing up as corrupt... same principle as a Flash drive, I tried using recovery utilities and I'm able to read the data off the drive and save the data, but just can't use it anymore as a drive.. I'm looking for any low level format utility that could possibly allow me to use the Compactflash 128MB part... I even tried Sandisk itself since it was still under warranty but they've discontinued the device and can only offer me other products...
Dead flash drives? What's going on here?!
by tcuillier - 5/23/08 7:31 PM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Maybe someone has already stated this. Plug the drive into your USB port, listen for the recognition sound, then go to Control Panel, then to System, then to Device Manager. Click on Disk Drives, left click on your USB drive and click on Uninstall. This will remove your USB drive from your system. Unplug the drive, then plug it back in. Your computer will go through the New Hardware routine---viola--All Better!
Tom Cuillier
did not work
by pszeto - 6/8/08 8:24 AM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by tcuillierMy new Patriot thumb drive does not even show up in the drive drives in Device Manager. I have another thumb drive that does work in the same USB port. the Patriot thumb drive works on my other Windows XP PC. Any ideas? thanks
check the electrical connection of the usb to mother board
by ravi383 - 5/23/08 11:48 PM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
When the USB is plugged into the mother board slot, if the pins are mismatched. This is what that happens. The power wire that powers the usb stick from the mother board to the USB stick will send power to the data reader on the USB's power input will be looking for power from the mother board, instead is connected to the data reader on the mother board. So the power source from the mother board will fry the USB internal circuit. Result a dead USB Drive. Or if the USB Drive is "yanked" out of the computer slot while the computer is negotiating file transactions or has finished transacting, a sudden yank will cause a power surge between the mother board and the USB causing the USB internal memory to die. You are supposed to safely eject or remove the, or safely disengage the usb drive from the computer drives before pulling the usb out of its slot. By doing this all the power and data connections are severed between the parties before they are separated. I am not saying that somebody while assembly of the computer accidentally mismatched the power and data wires inside on the mother board. The wires might have accidentally gotten short circuited too. In India when people buy seperate compnents and assemble them at home, they make this mistake and the USB sticks fry every time a USB stick is inserted into the system. However in a laptop, the chances of this happening in a factory is very rare. Also in a factory that assembles desktops too it is rare, that the tech's could make such a mistake. But if they did this switching of the leads, then the USB will fry.
ravi
USB Flash memory
by robert.bev - 6/4/08 11:34 AM In reply to: check the electrical connection of the usb to mother board by ravi383Hi
I have had this prob with my Samsung made flash drive, and I have read each letter and have come to the conclusion that we all agree we now know the cause of the failures, and also that nobody knows how to repair and recover any info from the drive, so i'm going to throw mine away!!!!
Regards to all, Robert.
dead flash...
by redking44 - 6/4/08 7:43 PM In reply to: USB Flash memory by robert.bevnow you're just trash talking..
but it would have been nice to have some kind of scientific expert assesment of the problem.
and my opinon is unchanged - they're engineered to fail.
Dead flash drives.
by rosie82 - 5/24/08 10:18 AM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have had the same problem with two different flash drives. After doing a little research (I asked my son who makes a living at keeping computers operating for the company he works for) I found that after performing a format on the flash drives I could use them again. And, when I use them again, before unpluging from the USB, I put my mouse on the little task bar icon that looks like kind of a gray rectangle with a green arrow over it. A rectangular balloon pops up that says "Safely Remove Hardware". Click on this icon and then click the drive that the flash drive is connected to. Another balloon pops up that says "Safe To Remove Hardware".
Start with your USB connector
by WTM - 5/29/08 8:32 PM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
What rev is your USB connector. I'd start there. Via chipsets are notorious for backwards engineered USB ports, so you might check that too.
Other than that, I would check to see if the device is really connected. Does it have a light or LED that tells you it's plugged in? And hopefully you aren't throwing a curve, like using an antiquated version of Windows.
Look in disk management if that doesn't work. Try to find a volume that isn't labeled or tagged.
Don't worry that much about unsafe removal of hardware. Unless you're writing to the device at the time. The voltage in USB is really quite low.
Now the bad news. I've had thumb drives and MP3 players do this to me as well. No warning. Just gone. Nothing more. If you look inside, you will notice some questionable construction in a lot of these devices.
Flahs drives dyeing on you huh ?
by markwarrior - 6/1/08 10:59 AM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Never experienced that problem before ... Thank the Lord literally.
Howevedr this is what I do to prevent this problem.
I always look to see how much space the drive is useing.
For instance if i have 10 files on my drive and am useing only less
than 4 MB and perhaps video files @ 256 MBs ... that's a total of
300 MB on my 512 flash stick. However when I select properties
to see how much space is being used and see that there is more than
304 MB being used then there is an issue.
Or reguardless if I am suspicious in anyway of my flash being hi-jacked.
Never leave your flash in your USB port...remove it soon as you are finished
or dont do a lot of searches etc. with it still in your USN.
Now with that said ... I take my files from my flash and put them on my
desktop (if you permanently want to keep the files be a good idea to transfer
them to a cd/dvd).
Then i reformat the drive 1st quick format then again the slower format just to
be sure everything has been deleted...then put the files back on the drive.
Then remove them off of my desktop in my recycle bin once being sure they are
firstly on my drive and accessable then I dump my bin.
Hope this is a help !
answer
by valenti_valenti - 6/3/08 2:21 AM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
sorry i m late.
try to ask somebody for check of your configuration, try to check plug-ins maybe they are weak and old so they won t work properly
dead flash drieve
by mdsaifuddin - 6/19/08 12:53 AM In reply to: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
ok
ur flash drive is not working so plz take it to any technition or it may be a damage piece or it may be of bad quality
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