USB Toshiba Stick 4GB

madhulk 2012-11-03 15:20:41 UTC #1

Hi guys,
Recently I got a strange problem with my Tohiba stick.
I insert it into the PC and I get The disk in drive * is not formatted. Do you want to format it now? error.
So far, so good, but once I start the formatting process it
cannot complete properly and tells me it can't format it.
And the thing is there wasn't even a hint of bad performance of
my stick. Just a few days ago it was working fine when all of a sudden
I started showing this message and couldn't format it.

So, has it really gone dead or is there any way of fixing it?

DrageMester 2012-11-03 15:42:09 UTC #2

You could try formatting your USB stick with HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool; it will remove any existing partition on your USB drive before formatting thus giving you a fresh start.

If that doesn’t work, try formatting using another computer.

If that also doesn’t work, your stick is most likely dead.

madhulk 2012-11-10 11:57:06 UTC #3

Hi,
I have tried everything you said but to no avail.
Could it just gone dead all of a sudden? I mean it’s never
failed me before, nor giving the slightest clue of a potential failure.

DrageMester 2012-11-10 15:41:13 UTC #4

Yes, it’s possible for flash media to die all of a sudden with no warning, but it’s also possible that it died while slowly corrupting blocks, but you just didn’t discover it before it was too late.

madhulk 2012-11-24 14:22:05 UTC #5

Hi again,
Just dropping in to tell you I’ve found a fix for now.
I formatted in FAT and it works fine until I decide to format in FAT32 -
then it becomes unusable again.

DrageMester 2012-11-24 15:49:02 UTC #6

Using FAT(16) you’re only able to use 2 GB of the drive’s capacity, so perhaps the problem lies between 2 GB and 4 GB on your drive?

Personally I’d stop worrying about this drive, ditch it, and get another drive.