Flash Drive went bad

[sactoking]

I ordered a Super Talent Pico flash drive off of Amazon. I formatted it to NTFS yesterday and used it for Readyboost. I also installed a program called LOTRO Flashboost. I am using Vista x64.

Today when I tried to boot up, the computer wouldn't post with the drive installed. When I removed it, it booted to desktop just fine. When I'm at the desktop and insert the drive, Vista can't recognize it. The Start/Stop Device box comes up and lists it as "USB Mass Storage Device/Ut 165 USB2FlashStorage USB Device". Vista won't assign it a drive letter, so I can't get into it to reformat. In the Device Manager, it IS listed as a Disk Drive named "Ut 165 USB2FlashStorage USB Device", but when I try to update the driver is says the driver for "Disk Drive" is most current. Finding Vista drivers for a USB flash drive has been ridiculous, since they're built into Vista.

I'm not sure what went wrong or why the drive doesn't work now. Any help would be appreciated!

Update: 1/12/09- vendor accepted RMA. I didn't want to send it back, but it was impossible to fix.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Maybe it's just dead? RMA it to amazon.

 

[BlueAcolyte]

Maybe it's just dead? RMA it to amazon.

 

[Blain]

Have you tried reformatting with NTFS and leaving the LOTR app off?

 

[sactoking]

Well, I can't format it. Neither my x64 nor my x86 Vista computer will recognize it. I brought it in to work today and the XP rig here does the same thing: loads "USB Mass Storage Device/Ut 165 USB2FlashStorage USB Device" but doesn't assign it a drive letter and it doesn't show in the Disk Manager.

At home, on Vista, if I try to 'stop' the drive the computer hangs. At work, on XP, if I try to 'stop' the drive I get an error message that the drive can't be stopped.

I guess I could RMA it, but I literally only had it one day.

 

[Blain]

Does the drive show up in the Storage part of the Computer Management?

 

[sactoking]

No, it does not.

I tried stopping it in XP, and that's when I got the 'drive can't be stopped' error. After that, the listing changed from "USB Mass Storage Device/Ut 165 USB2FlashStorage USB Device" to "USB Mass Storage Device/Unknown Drive/Disk Drive". As of right now, it CAN be stopped using the proper dialogue box. Also, the drive DOES show up under "My Computer" now. It is listed as "Other/Local Disk F:". There is a red question mark on it. When I right click and go to 'Properties' it's listed as a Local Disk with file type RAW. Free and used space are both 0 bytes. It still does not show up under Storage in Disk Manager.

 

[RebateMonger]

Apparently Vista's version of Diskpart.exe can see USB Flash Drives. You might try that and see what it can do, since it has abilities that Disk Management doesn't.