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Problem description: Friend nuked a 32gb 3.0 flash drive. Windows sees the drive but asks for me to insert the disk in order to do anything with it. Can't scan for errors, 99% sure the MBR is somehow hosed. Can't see the drive in administrative tools, or anywhere else other than the letter assigned by windows. I've tried to populate the volume and it comes back as 0 / No Media. Attempted fixes: Various tools to see if I can mount the drive to scan it to see what happened, drive won't be seen under Administrative tools, or under testdisk or mbrscan.. Recent changes: Nope. He's had the drive for a while and I wanted to use it as a usb drive to install windows 10. -- Operating system: Windows 10 Home. 64 bit System specs: Self built. i7, 16gb ram, Gigabyte LGA 1150 motherboard, on board graphics, 700w power supply. Drive is -> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00O4VAKY2 Location: USA I have Googled and read the FAQ: Yes Just wondering how hosed the drive is, and if it's an easy/freeware kind of fix, or if I just need to chunk it into the garbage and order a new drive.
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Jun 10, 2016 16:29
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 06:09 |
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The best way I've found is to use a wiping tool to blow the whole thing away. You only really need to kill the first few megabytes, generally. That's so long as your OS can see the device, of course. If Windows is no good you can try a live Unix boot disc or similar.
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Jun 10, 2016 17:31
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Any suggestions on a software to use? I don't have a Unix based system but I can make a boot CD and use it on a laptop I have. All it shows under windows is the drive letter and that's it.
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Jun 10, 2016 18:12
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You could try Eraser, but with situations like this I tend to have better luck under unix. Having said that, it's because I have all that sort of thing lying around in my office so it's easy. Any wiping tool should be much like any other, but I've used Eraser myself so I know it works. (Well, on a hard drive, not a USB stick.) Just to clarify, I used this method to let me format a disk to it's full size when I've been playing around with DCO/HPA overlays. They kept registering as a far smaller size until I blew the start of the disk away with a zero wipe. It's not a good sing that you can't format it at all. The issue is if Windows is properly seeing the drive so that Eraser can do it's work. If Windows can't see it, try a Mac. It probably even has the dd command-line tool, but if you don't know anything about that it could be a quick way to wipe the Mac by accident. 
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Jun 11, 2016 06:09
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The way to do that in Windows is the command line tool Diskpart.
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Jun 26, 2016 23:45
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