cannot access USB flash drive

my friend has been having trouble with a pen drive of his and neither him nor me can access it. it's an 8gb sandisk cruzer edge and i can open it in explorer, but it's empty. properties window cant detect file system and capacity, used and free space is 0B. tried to format but format window doesnt appear. uninstalling drivers didnt work either. i've tried it in 2 computers and all ports of each. tried to format in command prompt but it says error in IOCTL call. nod32 av cant open for scanning either. any ideas?

 

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4306/session/L3RpbWUvMTM4MTIzODQ0OC9zaWQvLWw1SjdoQ2w=
Go through the steps in FAQs #1 #3 and #4.

If you click more FAQs you will get pages of results as well as forum posts.
Sandisk forum for USB drives
http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/USB-Flash-Drives/ct-p/usb-ssd

 

the faqs didnt help. i disk management lists the drive used as having no media. screenshot is attached

 

USB flash drives in general are not very robust. Because they typically have exposed contacts, they can be damage easily - especially by ESD (static discharges). This is why they should never be used to store the only copy of important files. You cannot expect something you can get for $3 to be very robust or reliable.

Since you have tried it on more than one computer, it sounds like it is toast to me. You might try EaseUS Flash Drive Recovery or Recuva but I would not hold your breath.

 

recovery didnt work. luckily it didnt have anything important in it, just some songs. So its dead for sure?

 

Again, since you tried it on multiple computers, I sure sounds dead to me.

 

I have had similar problems before, one of the most obvious I missed for days was a small amount of pocket fluff had accumulated inside the connector, try a good blast of compressed air across the pins inside the four pin housing.
One drive I managed to recover by flashing its firmware although this will wipe it in the process. I'll go find the tool I used and repost,

 

Good point! Hadn't thought of something as simple as that. Sure worth a try.

 

I've had this problem before. Can I ask if you have tried going to the drive through the disk manager?? Sometimes if you erase the disk, or create a new volume, and then format it you can get the space back.

goto start, type "manage" , click computer management, click disk management, then right click on the disk and click "delete volume"... try then to format it. It's worked for me! Good luck