USB Flash Drive Woes . . . help!?

[albertw2]

I have a Sandisk Cruzer Mini 512 that was humming along just great! Yesterday I plugged int in went to My Comp and clicked on the drive letter corresponding to the flash and it keeps asking me to insert a disk!?!? Seems as though my computer is treating it as a floppy drive. I have not changed anything inthe bios to have it treated as a bootable drive . . . so what gives? I have uninstalled the drive and everything that I can see corresponding to it under device manager, rebooted and reconnected. I plug it back in, system picks it up and installs but it is still asks me to insert a disck when I click onit under "My Comp". Any suggestions? Thanks!

[sgtspector]

It sounds like a drive letter assignment conflict to me. Go to disk management and check what letter is assigned to it. Also if you rt click it in my computer and then click hardware, select it from the list in the window then click properties on the bottom then volumes and populate. If it cant be populated it is probably a drive letter conflict. HTH

[albertw2]

Tx Spector but that is a negatory on the drive conflict letter, all drive letters are as they have always been. Used disk management and it identifies it as a generic USB flash drive USB device. It does let me populate the list but identifies capacity, unallocated space and reserved space as 0 MB's.

When I go to disk mgmt / removeable storage / libraries and right click the usb drive then properties the general info states that the drive is empty. Also, comp also always identified drive as Sandisk now it does not - picks it up as generic. It really seems like it's treating it as either a floppy drive or treating it like my multicard reader drive. I am perplexed!!

[not important]

Can you put any info on the drive?
Did you previuosly remove the Sandisk without using the "safe disconnect" feature? I have seen a couple of thumb drives bite the dirt that way.

[glc]

Try it in another computer to see if the problem is with the stick itself or with your USB system. If it's the stick, get it replaced on warranty.

[albertw2]

Originally Posted by not important Can you put any info on the drive? Did you previuosly remove the Sandisk without using the "safe disconnect" feature? I have seen a couple of thumb drives bite the dirt that way.

Nope . . . always use safe disconnect. I use Microsoft USB Manager on my system and that does not detect it as a usb drive either. If it was toast would the system identify it all? It does pick it up and identify as a disk drive.

[albertw2]

Originally Posted by glc Try it in another computer to see if the problem is with the stick itself or with your USB system. If it's the stick, get it replaced on warranty.

When plugged into another system it is still not detected as usb drive . . . other system states that the disk drive is empty . . . which is why it seems to me it is somehow now treated as a floppy.

[glc]

Then it's defective and needs to be replaced.

[albertw2]

Originally Posted by glc Then it's defective and needs to be replaced.

Well I contacted Sandisk and they are willing to replace if it is defective . . . my fear is that it isn't and I really don't want to lose the stuff I have on the drive!!! I read a few posts somewhere else where two people had the same problem . . . flash being treated as a floppy. They said it occurred after enabling write caching trying to improve performance, and then unplugging without safe unplugging. If this happened to mine do you think there is anyway to bring it back?

[glc]

Download the trial of this software:

http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/

If it can't do anything with it, there's no way to get your data back.

You realy need to keep a backup of your key on a computer hard drive somewhere. They are not designed for critical storage.