Can you Bring a Flash Drive back from the Dead?

[cincibuck]

I somehow crashed a 2.5 gig flash drive... I had some i pod/i tunes stuff on it operating on a PC... it just fell down and went pffft. I've tried it on four different computers and none of them recognize it.

anyway, I've named it Lazarus and I'm hoping I don't have to pitch the body. I've tried to reformat but the PC acts like the drive isn't there. I tried a program "guaranteed to restore hard drives," and that did n't work. Any other suggestions?

 

[sandgk]

If you wish to reformat (as in you have given up all hope of recovering the data) then some report success using the HP Flash drive formatting utility. Discussion here also points to an alternative utility (free) called USBDeView should you still first wish to perform CPR on the flash drives contents. It basically forces a dismount of the USB drive and then the drive demands to be mounted.

 

[Taosman]

Older flash drives, as I understand the technology, have a finite life time.
The surface ability of the drives lose their ability to record.
When they die, that's probably it.
People don't generally back up important files often enough. :(

(Newer technology flash drives have improved in this regard. And flash drive memory will eventually replace the hard drives in use today in PCs. But, prices remain high for large flash drive memory.)

 

[Ttown]

I have had some luck at times when i tap the drive lightly. Sometimes it will start up.
If that happens get the data copied fast.

 

[cincibuck]

The flash is less than a year old I ran the HP program and my computer now acknowledges that the flash is there on a USB hub, but it says it isn't formatted. When I click on format I get the message that it can't be formatted. sounds fried. I also ran USBDeview but it didn't do anything but tell me everything that had been connected to the PC by way of the USB.

 

[OCBucksFan]

Sounds to me like the memory inside is more than likely damaged. I assume you've tried different USB slots just to make sure, so I would call HP, no idea what the warranty is, but when I worked at my old companies we did a standard 1 year warranty.