USB drive dead?

[suklee]

I have an Imation 16GB USB drive that was working fine a few weeks ago. Was formatted FAT32 I believed, and has been used in both OS X and Windows.

2 days ago I discovered it had a 200MB partition, a 128MB 'unallocated' and the rest was a third partition. I couldn't format it at all in any OS.. after Googling I found using Diskpart which successfully erased all the partitions, but I still cannot format it in Vista's computer manager nor OS X (Lion)'s Disk Utility. Is my drive dead?

Not sure if this helps but here's what I found off the console in Mac:

30/12/11 12:20:16.000 AM kernel: disk2s1: device/channel is not attached.
30/12/11 12:20:16.000 AM kernel: Untitled 1: bad busy count (0,-1)
30/12/11 12:20:16.000 AM kernel: Backtrace 0xffffff8000627431 0xffffff8000625f6f 0xffffff8000820057 0 0 0 0
30/12/11 12:20:18.000 AM kernel: 0 0 AppleUSBCDC: start - initDevice failed
30/12/11 12:20:18.000 AM kernel: USBMSC Identifier (non-unique): AA62709170100048 0x718 0x59d 0x1100

 

[Dahak]

it should not be dead, not sure why it would not allow you to format inside lion or vista, but if you back into diskpart and type the following, after selecting the disk that is your usb drive

create partition primary
select partition 1
format fs=ntfs / or / fs=fat32 quick
assign

now it should show up as a drive in windows explorer

 

[suklee]

I already tried the format fs=fat32 command -- it wouldn't complete either! I'll try NTFS and post more error messages.

 

[suklee]

I found instructions here, but I still can't format the drive:

http://superuser.com/questions/88509/usb-drive-not-showing-full-size

I can't do it in diskpart, it said:

Diskpart has encountered an error: The parameter is incorrect.
See the System Event Log for more information.

If I try in Explorer, it says:

An unexpected error has occurred. Check the system event log for more information on the error. Close the disk management console, then restart disk management or restart the computer.

In Event Viewer - System log, the only thing I really see is "Cannot zero sectors on disk"... (Source: VDS Basic Provider)

 

[suklee]

Any other suggestions, or is my USB stick really dead?

 

[suklee]

I'm out of ideas, sure looks like the drive is dead unless anyone else has input.

I'm going to try to get an RMA, if possible.

 

[Dahak]

by the sound of it, i would guess too that the drive is dead.

 

[Coup27]

you could try erasing all partitions and making a new one under gParted. I've used that in the past when I've had issues with Windows and partitions and it's always worked.

 

[suklee]

Thanks for the suggestion, I was able to format it in Gparted but still not usable in Windows..

 

[VirtualLarry]

tried vconsole.com 's USB flash drive tester tool?

If you do the full read/write test, it writes to the entire drive (kind of like an LLF), and then does a read-test on it.

It should cause all bad sectors to be remapped (if they can be).

If you still get errors, then toss it, it's not worth fixing.

http://www.vconsole.com/client/?page=page&id=13

 

[suklee]

Thanks. Just tried the "Write, read and compare" test... no dice:

! Write fatal (3/3) error at LBN = 24960 -- The semaphore timeout period has expired. (121.)