Flash Drives Still Broken!

Hi! I still have some flash drives that are broken. I have three unused ones but plan to stuff two of them and give them as presents. Some of the broken flash drives register in This PC but with no other information, i.e. disk used and free space, and, when I try to format them, the computer tells me to insert a disk into the drive. One flash drive seems to be split into two partitions; only one partition works, and the working partition IIRC was small. I don't need these to work: I can just get new ones, but I really want these to work. Any help would be appreciated.

 

I have a 32Gb flash which always worked fine but stopped doing so after a failed effort to install a bootable Linux distro onto it. Try the suggested solutions but if no joy take a Macrium Relect image of a working drive and restore it to the problematic drive. It should then become accessible again and you can reformat it.

This may also work with other disk imaging systems too but I've only tried it with MR v8.

 

Right now, I have two drives connected: a USB floppy drive and one of the broken flash drives in question. I also have a SSD drive. Now, AOMEI is displaying two drives, and Drive 1 is not realistic for either attached drive. I attached the output.

 

I just realized: Drive 1 is a RAM drive.

 

I just tried diskmgmt, and it reported Drive D: (the flash drive) has no media.

 

Disconnect other drives and just do as I suggested.

 

Another flash drive can't even be installed at all. Earthling, I don't understand. I don't know the capacities of the broken flash drives, so it would be hard to do the copy. When I right-click the drive in This PC then click format, it asks me to insert a disk into Drive D:, so I don't think the copy would be doable at all. I'm going to try the other broken drives now.

 

I don't think it's a hardware issue because some flash drives work perfectly.

 

I tried it, but ChkDsk couldn't access it at all. I will try it again now.

 

The message I got was "Cannot open volume for direct access."

 

I don't think the flash drives have any data I need to recover.

 

I just tried Device Manager, and it says the drive is working. It also has the right name of the drive.

 

Any working flash drive, no matter how small, should do the job. Just try it!

 

BTW, the drive entry in This PC is grayed out.

 

Earthling, you're right. I should just buy new ones. I have three unused ones, but two of them are earmarked for Christmas presents, and one is at my mother's house. I can buy more the next time I go to my mother's house.

 

TechnicalBook: File Explorer. The data under Volumes is empty, no data at all. Under the Details tab, property "Device Description" has property "Disk drive."

 

The device drivers work on other flash drives, and I don't want to lose their contents. I just want to reuse the broken flash drives. Earthling is right, though: I should just buy new flash drives.

 

Just ensure whatever drive you image is formatted and accessible in File Explorer, content immaterial. No guarantee of success of course but my solution is the simplest to implement.

 

Policies is set to Quick removal" which I need, as I just pull out the flash drive when I want to switch flash drives. As I said, Volumes contains no data. Driver shows nothing funny. Do you want me to try Driver Details?

 

Earthling: Again, I don't know the capacities of the drives in question, and one of them may be 128GB, and I don't have another 128GB flash drive.

 

Uhh...I think some of the other drives are 32GB, and I think I know which one is 128GB. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but, to write the image, the destination drive needs to be accessible.

 

I did. I attached the screenshot.

 

I don't think there are any driver issues, as other flash drives work perfectly.

 

Sorry, had to leave this last night - women just don't understand priorities As I've been trying to impress on you Harry - just try it! No data will be lost and your system won't suffer at all if you try and it fails for any reason.

 

I tried to clone the partition using AOMEI, but, when I got to the destination drive, the Next button wouldn't activate.

 

Not you TB, just a throwaway remark that husbands worldwide might relate to so, yes, those devoid of a sense of humour might consider it sexist

 

I asked you to image, not clone. Image files are compressed, clones are not.

 

Okay. Thank you.

 

It doesn't have an option to image a partition.

 

I suggested in my first post that you image a working drive. Why are you trying to image a partition? I you don't have a working drive you would need get one and format it.

 

I believe I know what I'm doing wrong: I need both drives to be attached.

 

You do NOT need both drives connected, but you do need somewhere to store the image file - anywhere on your hdd will do just as long as you will know where to find it to do the restore. Once the image file is complete you need to attach the drive you are trying to repair and attempt to restore your image file to it.

 

Aomei apparently doesn't support drive-cloning, just partition-cloning. What other tool can I use?

 

This is getting ridiculous! AGAIN, you are talking about CLONING. It's an IMAGE file I have asked you to create. And btw, Aomei does do drive cloning - it's one of its primary purposes, but we are not interested in that here.

 

I'm sorry, but I don't see any options for imaging, but I don't have the Pro version of Aomei.

 

You don't need the Pro version - just read the words under Disk Backup -

Backup hard disks to an image file

 

Two pages and 51 replies later... Hate to say it, but the first reply has already provided the best answer of all. Should have just followed and moved on.

 

Back in #30 the OP gave us a clue as to how he manages to break so many drives -

Policies is set to Quick removal" which I need, as I just pull out the flash drive when I want to switch flash drives

from which I suspected the damage may well be repairable. But was it worth the effort? No way!

 

You mean 32 GB for $8?

 

Translation for those not residing in the US.He might not have understood post #2.

"File 13" is a euphemism for the trash can.

 

Just wondering out loud... might "File 13" have started life as "File B" -- as in file it to the bin??

 

A couple of months ago, I acquired six new flash drives, three 16GB and three 32GB, and don't currently need to recycle my old, nonworking ones. However, I still want to recycle them. I'm reformatting a 32GB one now, and, so far, it's working. After this, soon, I'm going to try some of my other drives.