Hello,
I bought a 16gb USB Flash Drive. It worked great. I was copying some files to it while on the internet and my computer locked up before the copying process was completed. I ended up having to do a hard shut down and reboot. After the reboot the flash drive no longer worked. It does not work on any computer now and when clicked on, a "Insert Disk" window pops open saying: "Please insert a disk into drive D:." . The drive seems to be corrupted and the pc now thinks it is a floppy or CD drive.

When opening Windows Explorer the flash drive appears as “Removable Disk (D:)”.
When I click on it, an “insert desk” window pops open and says: “Please insert a disk into drive D:”.

When right clicking the D: drive and selecting Properties:
… under the “General” Tab, the following data is displayed;
Type: Removable Disk, File System: Unknown
(on other flash drives I have the File System has them listed as “FAT”).
it also shows the “Used space”, “Free Space” and “Capacity” as 0 bytes.
(on a working flash drive is reads out the correct amounts).

… under the “Tools” Tab;
if I select the Error-checking feature it will not run.
if I select the “Defragment Now” option, the Disk Defragmenter opens, does not even recognize the
drive (not listed) and a window opens stating “Disk Defragmenter cannot run on this volume type.”

… under the “Hardware” Tab; It does show the “Generic USB Flash Disk USB Device”, Type: "Disk drives".
There is a difference in the appearance between a good flash drive and the one not working. The one
not working appears as “Generic USB Flash Disk USB Device” and the one working appears as
"I-O Data USB Flash Disk USB Device". Othere than that the data displayed is identical.

If I click on the Troubleshoot button I get the Microsoft help and support center window.
From what I found, I don't think Microsoft knows what a flash drive is, let alone how to troubleshoot
one! Little to no help there!

If I click on the Properties button the following data is displayed:
Disk: Disk 1 (working flash drive reads: Disk 2 )
Type: Removable
Status: No Media ( working flash drive reads: "Online")
Partition Styl: Not Applicable
Capacity: 0 MB (working flash drive reads: 125 MB)
Unallocated Space: 0 MB
Reserved space: 0 MB

Volumes / Capacity area is blank (working flash drive reads: Volume: (F:) Capacity: 124 MB )


I don’t care about retrieving the content currently on the flash drive. I am just looking to get the flash drive working again. I can replace the data! This is a 16gb flash drive.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. It seems flash drives do not survive crashes well and they are still new enough that most people still do not know what can and can't be done with them (with regards to formatting and troubleshooting).

Thanks for your assistance. Hopefully not as much a challenge as it apprears.

Configuration: Windows XP Internet Explorer 6.0
All PC's I use are WinXP Pro