USB Drive Problem

U_Fig

I have a USB 3.0 Flash drive that is 16GB I've had it for more than a year.

I went to add something to it today and when i plugged it into the USB 3.0 port nothing shows up tried USB 2.0 nothing shows up, then using disk management i refreshed disks and it says it needs to be initialized but it's only showing up as 4GB and when i initialize it it won't format..

I've tried HP format tool and windows one and neither will format it...

any help on what might work

it had been previously used to install windows could this have damaged it?

fasttalkerchat

Did you format as NTFS or FAT32?

U_Fig

it won't format now at all it just stays as RAW... it came formatted in ntfs but i may have formatted it as FAT32 at some stage to windows using it

johnner09

download a programme called "easus partition manager". that will show up any unalocated space on your drive and will let you reformat it to ntfs. it`s a free programme i would recomend it. hope this helps

john.

fasttalkerchat

U_Fig wrote: »

it won't format now at all it just stays as RAW... it came formatted in ntfs but i may have formatted it as FAT32 at some stage to windows using it

I would imagine that's the issue as FAT32 has a 4GB limit.
Try John's solution and let us know what you see.

U_Fig

don't think so the problem is it's only showing the unallocated space as 4GB when it's a 16GB drive and it can't find any partition data on it

fasttalkerchat

I had a programme in mind... but it wont work on USB drives...

I googled and this programme seems to do the job for USB:
http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

U_Fig

tried it says format cannot complete.. i think the drive is just fudged