n# » How to fix a dead flash drive (or USB key)

How to fix a dead flash drive (or USB key)

January 15th, 2007

One of my flash drives suddenly died today. It all happened when XP suddenly froze for some reason. after rebooting, the device was dead - XPdetected it as a 0mb device (and attempted to format it as such - which didn’t work)

After a little research I was able to revive the drive, and heres the procedure (pretty easy):

Download and install the HP Drive Key Boot Utility
Open the desktop icon and select the correct flash drive under device
Select the file system you want to format to (FAT, FAT32, NTFS)
Tick Quick Format
Click start

Officially this software (HP Drive Key Boot Utility) is meant for HP disks, but unofficially it seems to work fine at formatting most flash media, even digital camera cards.

Entry Filed under: Hacks, Misc

51 Comments Add your own

1. chanux | January 16th, 2007 at 11:17 am

Thanx for this tip.I;’ll digg it.
2. | February 13th, 2007 at 10:40 am

Any suggestions on how to fix a USB key when the computer sometimes picks it up and sometimes doesn’t, or doesn’t recognize it?
3. a.j. | February 13th, 2007 at 1:21 pm

Any suggestions on how to fix a USB when the computer does not read it or pick it up?
4. Tom | February 14th, 2007 at 7:50 pm

Thanks!
5. eric | February 22nd, 2007 at 4:41 pm

holy crap. that was amazing. i looked everywhere to get my drive fixed. this worked great!
6. jarves | February 28th, 2007 at 3:08 am

when i insert my usb flash drive, my computer just freezes. Any knowledge on how to fix the flash drive?
7. CHarlieD | March 3rd, 2007 at 12:09 pm

ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. You are a life saver. it worked like a charm! a definite digg…
8. Munish Ahuja | March 20th, 2007 at 11:53 pm

Thanks…
9. TK_M | April 3rd, 2007 at 12:16 pm

If a USB item is not being recognised, try using “USBDeview” (freeware download) to “uninstall” it. Then when you restart the computer, with luck it will now be recognised as “found new hardware” and will be reinstalled.

You may also need to run the “HP Drive Key Boot Utility” to reformat as well, to get the full memory back.

If it still isn’t working, I’m sorry, but it looks like the hardware is faulty and will need replacing.
10. edouard | April 27th, 2007 at 6:05 am

how to fix a flash drive if got burn by a computer
11. nudge | April 29th, 2007 at 11:21 am

works great, thank you
12. Khoa | May 10th, 2007 at 9:17 am

I left my USB MP3 player in water,so I can’t use it anymore.My dad tried and my comp didn’t recognize it,but it still get warmer and warmer.Somebody help me
13. ray | June 4th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

No chance of a way to fix that issue on a Mac is there?
14. Joseph Clovis | July 8th, 2007 at 10:03 am

What about when the flash drive works fine, but sometimes prevents the computer (under Vista Home Premium) from booting up until you remove the flash drive? Mine hangs up with the repeating green bar until eventually the screen goes black and there is nothing you can do but hit reset. While watching it in this hung state on at least two different occasions, I just pulled the flash drive out (SanDisk Cruzer Mini 1.0GB) and suddenly Windows finishes booting. Please email me your solution if you have one. Thanks.

I’m also interested in creating a bootable flash drive with utilizies for running CHKDSK on my Vista HDD while it is not running under Vista. Any suggestions?
15. eugene davis | July 9th, 2007 at 1:53 pm

my simpletech flash drive is dead. i tried it on several computer and not only do they say the same thing, “USB device not recognized”, but my flash drive does not light up.

is there any way of getting the data on it.

thanks in advance.
16. eugene davis | July 9th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

oh and yes i tried the

Download and install the HP Drive Key Boot Utility

but i could not get beyond the second page, it would ask what drive am i working from

the square was blank and i could not type in a drive, nor did it offer any drives.

and hitting next did nothing
17. Ramblan | July 16th, 2007 at 11:44 pm

Hi, thanks for the tip, I was able to repair one of my flash disk, but I have one question! after the repair, my 1GB flash disk capacity, when I tried to reformat, it showed about 648MB capacity instead of 1GB?
please guide me on this matter, please do your magic, thank you again… cheer..
18. david | July 25th, 2007 at 4:40 pm

I have a Samsung pleomax with Ceedo installed that all computers are recognizing the flash drive but not the Ceedo nor the data on the flash drive. Windows lists some memory as used but I can’t access it. Any suggestions?
19. Javier Solorzano | July 26th, 2007 at 10:47 am

Awsome!
20. Anafa David mudi | July 27th, 2007 at 12:25 pm

Plkease i tried hp drive utility to know avail. please can anyone say somethiong helpful
21. James | August 13th, 2007 at 10:12 pm

I have two thumb drives I cannot use because M$`Windose Xtremely Poor can’t work out what they are and load the correct drivers. Also one film scanner that XP will not load the drivers to permit use, and finally a HP A3 printer that prints 1800×1200 dpi on old windows with HP drivers, but on Windose Xtremely Poor with M$ drivers, this printer prints at 360 dpi.

This help will at least solve some of the windose USB problems.

Thank you.
James
22. immrlizard | August 15th, 2007 at 9:09 am

@ a.j.

Sometimes this can happen when you have a bunch of cd/dvd drives or a few hard drives. Try using the disk manager feature in xp and assigning it a drive letter.

Often it recognizes the drive but doesn’t assign it a letter. We run into this problem all of the time with different brands because of network shares.

To access the disk manager simply right click on the my computer icon and go to manage. One of the options on the left will be disk manager.

If you see the drive listed then right click on it and select assign drive letter. It should show up from then on just by plugging it in
23. cli-fan | August 16th, 2007 at 7:20 am

Sometimes a USB stick can get messed-up partition/fs info. You can often fix this quickly and easily from the command line in Linux by inserting the stick and using fdisk on it.

You need to be super-user (use ’su’ command, and you’ll need the super password, or use ’sudo’ — use ‘man sudo’ to learn more). Your stick will usually show up as ‘/dev/sda’ (or ‘/dev/sdb’, etc) because it’s considered a SCSI-type device (i.e. ’sda’ == ‘[s]csi [d]evice [a]’). Use ‘man fdisk’ to learn how to use fdisk. Do not skip that step, unless you’re already an expert on fdisk (and if so, why are you even bothering to read this?)

BE CAREFUL, TAKE YOUR TIME, AND READ THE MANUAL if you aren’t 100% sure about each step. It’s easy to screw up (e.g. wipe your boot/root drive) if you’re careless, and no tears shall be shed for your negligence. As I provide only the clues, I disclaim any/all liabilities.

If you do it right, you’ll erase the existing partition(s) on the stick, then create a new Win95/FAT32 single partition. It should show up as ‘/dev/sda1′ (or ‘/dev/sdb1′, etc).

Then you’ll even be able to use ‘mkdosfs’ on it, to format it nicely, and when you pop it in under Windows — *bam* minty fresh disk!
24. cli-fan | August 16th, 2007 at 7:36 am

“I’m also interested in creating a bootable flash drive with utilizies for running CHKDSK on my Vista HDD while it is not running under Vista. Any suggestions?”

Look into the syslinux/memdisk utilities from H. Peter Anvin. Read the documentation, but to give you a leg up:
- set your BIOS to boot from USB-ZIP
- take a spare USB stick, and use fdisk to nuke its partition info, then create partition NUMBER 4 (not 0); this is the magic
- use syslinux to create a basic bootable setup
- add memdisk to allow a disk image to become a virtual drive
- create/find a disk image that contains your utilities (chkdsk, etc) and stick it in there with memdisk
- create a configuration (e.g. syslinux.cfg) that automatically launches memdisk with your disk image

Read the documentation and manual pages for the related command carefully. I know it might be overwhelming, but humans are the most capable lifeforms in the known universe. “You can DO EET!”
25. Kor | August 28th, 2007 at 6:20 pm

Thank you so much!!! I thought i would have had to go out and buy a new flash drive. Brilliant work!!!
26. Grey | September 13th, 2007 at 4:52 am

yo, the link is broken?

can someone up this file?
27. Luc | September 17th, 2007 at 3:30 am

IT WORKED!!!!!

You saved my life!!! Well, I mean, you saved my 512MB key from the gargage can.

Awesome!!

Big big thanks to you.
28. Ziggy | September 17th, 2007 at 4:11 am

What if the LED is burning but
the drive isn’t shown in drive manager?

how to you fix that :S
i got 4GB of that on it that i want back
29. teddy | September 24th, 2007 at 12:59 am

hi, i’ve tried the HP Drive Key Boot Utility but still my Kingston Data traveler 512mb flash doesn’t work. When i try to format it a message comes up saying “The disk in drive # cannot be formatted”. Can anyone help me
30. m | September 27th, 2007 at 7:46 am

will the reformatting by downloading and installing the HP drive key, erase the data on the drive? How can I get the data back?

Thanks much!
31. joe | October 11th, 2007 at 1:50 pm

How do you get memory from flash drive when capacitor is broke, or computers will not otherwise recognize the drive due to the a failure the electonics in the the flash drive which allow the computer to access the data.
32. kukuh | October 29th, 2007 at 3:31 am

i have usb flashdrive umax apus 210 8 GB
the problem is led no light and cannot read all the file’s
but the drive usb can display with label “removable disk” in my computer
can you help me to repair my usb ?or you have good suggestion about it.because i have many important file’s in my usb.
thanks a lot.
33. torrin | November 7th, 2007 at 6:08 pm

i need to know how to fix a flash drive that went through the wash
is still works sumtime but i have to take it out and put it back in for almost an hour
and sumtime it pops up with an error
can u help me?
34. Joe T. | November 12th, 2007 at 7:43 pm

My cheap Ebay flash drive has been driving me nuts. Basically I could format it, save data to it, then read the data in other computers. However, I could not add or edit files after the first install. If I did the files would work until I unplugged the drive. Afterwards the new files would be corrupted and unusable. I ran the HP boot utility and it has fixed my problems. I didn’t even lose any files. I have been testing the drive for a few hours to see if I can re-create the problem. So far so good.
35. Haplas | November 19th, 2007 at 2:35 am

Can someone give me a copy of that utility because donwload is unavailable..please..i really need it..can anyone send it to my email..myhaplas@yahoo.com..thanks in advance
36. JWong | November 29th, 2007 at 7:14 pm

OMG Thank you so much! I am amazed….My USB went from freezing my computer, to going back to normal. Thank you so much, this has been the most effective fix for ANY computer-related problems in a long time for me.

It’s been a while since something worked so nicely =)

Thanks a lot once again.
@teddy: I have a kingston data traveller too, and it’s the same size as yours. I used the program and it works great.
37. matoli | December 1st, 2007 at 5:57 pm

Great, thanks
38. Raymond | December 4th, 2007 at 10:34 am

I tried using the HP drive key utility for my USB Flash Drive in the command prompt, but it gave me IOTCL_DISK_SET_DRIVE_LAYOUT: Data error, unable to create partition, that kinda thing.

Can anyone help me with this?
39. John | December 5th, 2007 at 12:55 am

I messed up my flash drive while copying files from a dead computer using a Linux cd boot disc to access them. It worked for a few copy sessions then one of them messed up. My computer recognizes when I plug it in but can not read the drive. Further investigation says that there is no file system or it can’t recognize the file system.

When I try to use the HP program my one month old 1 GB Retail Plus flash drive reports that it is write protected. It is not and can’t be so what gives and how can I overcome that.
40. charles | December 16th, 2007 at 8:51 pm

my flash drive is dead and even the computer would not recognize it, it doesn’t even light,,, and i want to retrieve my files on it,
41. abdelmotaleb | December 19th, 2007 at 6:55 am

thank you man,you saved my life,i had some top secret information,and i get them back,all that by your amazing help,thank you.
42. Gordon Williams | January 16th, 2008 at 10:00 am

Bought a cheap 2Gb flashdrive which was unreliable pretty much from the start. Played with this on and off for months and decided to throw it out. Opened the case an as the storage was marked ‘Samsung’ I decided on one final attempt.

As I mess around with Vista I booted it and plugged the flashdrive in. Got the drive letter with problem media message and decided to formatt the drive NTFS.

Hey presto! it is now 100% reliable!
43. dave | January 19th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Any responses to the questions about what if the flash drive (Sandisk Cruzer 8 GB) isn’t recognized by the computer? The flash drive has a light which coming on, but now the light comes on but the computer does not see the flash drive. I can’t assign a letter to the drive because it is not seen. I see several people asking about computer not seeing drive…any way to retrieve data from a dead drive?
Thanks,
Dave
44. Kurt | January 24th, 2008 at 9:59 pm

Hi

3 Moths ago i had bought a USB Drive with a display on it (Search Google “Adata Show Me Disk” for picture) and just recently it has stopped responding to windows and now it doesn’t light up the only thing that works is the display.

Could someone please help me as i need it for the school year.
45. liswon | January 28th, 2008 at 2:55 am

I Have a sony 120gb Usb stick but when i formatted it, it was brought down to 2gb can some one explain why? If you know can u send a reply to the.armoured.dragon {at] gmail.com
46. ian | February 4th, 2008 at 6:19 am

I had try it with HP “USB Disk Storage Format Tool” but still not worked, “This Device Cannot Formatted” why?
have any solution or another software?
plzz…
thks..
47. fazal abbas | February 19th, 2008 at 9:04 am

when i insert my 4gb usb flash drive it comes that “usb device not recognised” and in detail it comes like this :one of the usb devices attached to this computer has malfunctioned,and Windows does not recognise it.”So what can i do with this .”"”!!plzz reply soon!!!
48. | February 25th, 2008 at 9:43 am

Hey i pulled my flash drive out of the computer and now the computer does not recognize it. What should i do????
49. zyphrus | March 5th, 2008 at 3:28 am

can you give me some tips with my flash drive it also dead but unfortunatelly it is not a HP disk. thnx email me: zyphrus_25@hotmail.com thnx again.
50. tafmaster | March 6th, 2008 at 12:08 am

Hi there we chill out the secret of 0’s and 1’s
51. chir | March 10th, 2008 at 9:55 am

i tried to upgrade firmware in my s1 mp3 player…but now windows xp wants driver for it. i couldn’t find any s1 mp3 player driver for windows xp. can some help plz.