Storage forum: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?!

Hey Redking... sorry to hear about the MP3 players.

One of my nieces has done this twice. I was able to recover them by going into disk manager (Right click "my computer", manage, then about half way down...)

Connect your device & wait for the device insertion confirmations sounds. In the lower right, gray pane, scroll down til you see the drive that SHOULD be your MP3 player. (It will say like Disk x Removable K: and the drive size).

When you are ABSOLUTELY SURE. No mistakes here... If you are 100% sure then right click and tell it to format. (Formatting removes all the data from whatever drive you tell it to... and it don't care if you're wrong!!!) Tell it yes and then when prompted, the file system should be FAT.

This will reset the drive and your MP3 player should be ready to accept data again.

Make sure you are logged in as administrator when checking the drive.

noelvm, I share your concern about Vista, but XP has a task bar as well. It's in the lower right corner of your screen, just left of the time indicator. If there's a < symbol, you may need to click on that to get a full view of the incons in the tray. Mousing over them will generate a popup balloon to tell you what they represent, and one should be for removing hardware (provided that you have hardware plugged in).

http://safelyremove.com/

I have been using this replacement for Microsoft's version for quite a while and have not looked back...

Hope this will bail you out also.

OK, I am getting lost or am not reading something correctly. When I click on this icon it gives a choice for removing the hardware drive itself. I had to do a system restore to recoup my G-drive. It didn't have anything to do with allowing the SD to be removed safely. What the heck did I do wrong?

Don't forget that if you are using an internal card reader you probably won't be able to get to its USB connection in order to have it recognized again. You'll have to re-boot!

In this case you just have to manage without using safely remove hardware. It should be fine as long as the drive is set for "optimize for safe removal" in Device Manager. Just wait until all operations are complete as far as Windows is concerned then wait until the activity lamp on the card or card reader indicates there is no more activity, then wait a couple of seconds more and pull out the card.

I want to thank you for your information. I just couldn't find that on my windows taskbar. I am so happy to know all the stuff from this question and yours helped me know exactly where to start now.

Many of us have shared your frustrations w/wxp. Consider, however, that the GREAT BILL IN THE SKY will cause the release of a new software OS to replace Vista in two or three years. That release will become the current, Vista the immediately previous and wxp will join w98, w95, ... in "the graveyard of the feedbags of the milked to death." Unsupported operating systems and the hardware for which they were designed will perhaps best be shipped to Linux users.

The bottom line is you are still a young man by some standards (I'm 74), and many old timers remember the impatience of youth even in the process of forgetting the important stuff.

In your definition of cache you said "the computer copies the device into its faster memory and then reading and writing to the faster memory instead of accessing the device each time."

You imply that the entire contents of the device are copied into memory. As far as I know this is not done. Indeed most USB memory devices nowadays are bigger than the available memory. USB memory devices are treated like disks and as such are organised in 'sectors'. This means that reads and writes are done one sector at a time. This can be more data that what was required to be read.

If the device is deemed by Windows to be 'Optimised for performance' then a write cache is used. This is when it is important to remove the device safely. But there can be other writes in the background or files opened so it's always better safely to remove the device.

I have had several drop dead. The most recent one causes the computer to reboot on insertion. I tried on a different computer and it caused the operating system to lose files and crash instantly..Requiting re-installation of windows.. I am sure this is a hardware issue and not a matter of bad or corrupt files on the flash disk..

I think the problem has more to do with the operating system and/or drivers than it does with the flash drives themselves. I have a lenovo thinkpad with a built-in multi-card reader. I've hot-swapped the SD cards from my PDA to my laptop on several occasions. However, one time the card reader on the laptop said that none of the cards were formatted, yet when I put the card in the PDA it read all the data fine. One thing to check (if you're using windows) is the device manager. With device manager open plug a flash drive in and see if it shows it under there. If you don't see it try refreshing the device manager window or choosing the option to search for new hardware. In most cases the operating system (Windows) uses generic device drivers for hot-swappable flash drives. If you know the manufacturer of the drives you might try looking for more specific drivers however this may not make all the much difference.

*If I think of anything else I'll post it.

Have you tried booting your PC with the flash drive already inserted into the USBB port? I have to do this because my work PC never recognizes my flash drive (or any other) unless it's in the USB port when Windows loads.

Hi Paul,
this isn't, or shouldn't be a "common problem" - I have a bunch of these drives, some bought, some freebie handouts from trade shows, etc., and in 3 years, I haven't had a failure. So three different drives all failing suggests a problem somewhere in your environment.

At risk of "teaching grandma to suck eggs", you are handling these things correctly, I assume. Like not just pulling the things out. On a Windows system ALWAYS use the green icon in the task bar to stop the drive and wait for the confirmation that it is safe to remove the drive. This will ensure all files are closed and buffers flushed. If you don't get the confirmation message, leave the drive in place until you shut the computer down. Any other method risks corrupting the data or worse, the FAT.

Don't defrag these drives. The drives do have a finite number of write cycles and by default, the drives will scatter the writes across the whole drive. By defragging, you move the date back to the starting sectors and you will wear them out faster. Fragmented flash drives do not have the performance problems associated with spinning disks.

Looking though your list of potential damages that you know haven't happened, the only omission I can see is a static discharge. Most flash drives, at least the metal cased ones, are reasonably well protected but a static discharge could affect the drive if it hit the connector. Try not to touch the actual connector.

I've assumed that the cables from the motherboard on your PCs to the external ports are correctly wired - it is possible on some boards to plug the connector in the wrong way round - most plugs have pin 1 marked in some way. Maybe worth a check.

Is the data lost forever? Maybe or maybe not. If it was data corruption on write, you might expect only the file you were writing to be affected but not necessarily so. To write a block, these drives read the whole of the sector in which the block is to be written, erase the whole sector and write the sector back with the new data added to the existing data, so some older files may be affected.

There are specialist data recovery companies that may be able to retrieve your data but these can be expensive. One of the better ones here in the UK is Kroll Ontrack. Their web site has trial downloads that you can use to look at the drive and see whether anything can be recovered. If so, you can buy the package to do it yourself. If the trial doesn't show up anything, they do have a free call and quote service. During normal business hours, one of their techies gets back to you within a couple of hours to discuss your problem. If they think the data can be recovered, they will give you a no obligation quote for their services. They may operate in other countries too or there will be equivalents.

Good luck!

It does the same thing but I fail to see how it's easier.

If all your tray icons are displayed 'Safely remove' takes 2 clicks. 3 clicks if you need to unhide the icon first.

If your 'My Computer' icon is visible on your desktop that's one click to open it, a right click on the device and, after finding the 'eject' from a typically longer list than the list of devices in 'safely remove, another click to eject. 3 clicks. Of course if the My Computer icon is not visible you need to make it visible first...