Problem with sandisk MP3 player

[Zed Rafi]

Hello all,

this post might be a little off-topic, but perhaps some of you wiz' knows
the solution to my annoying problem.

I was formatting my friend's HD today through the windows XP installer, and
noticed a 510 Meg partition when i was in the partitioning step in the
windows XP installation routine. i thought it was an unused partition so i
deleted it in order to consolidate its space with the rest of the available
drive space.

However, i noticed - after the fact - that the partition i had just deleted
was the flash memory on my friend's USB MP3 player that was plugged to the
PC!!!!!! It is a Sandisk SDMX1 512 Meg MP3 player.

so now, the partition on my friend's MP3 player has been deleted, the drive
is no longer formatted, and i can't see the drive space anymore on my
windows file explorer. I tried to format it through the format utility
integrated to Windows, but it said that it could not format the drive.
I also tried through the "format" command in a windows command line prompt,
but could not manage to format it this way either. It says "Filesystem type
is RAW. Use the /FS commutator to specifiy the filesustem that you wish to
use on this volume" (translation from french, perhaps not the precise error
message in english). I also typed "format h: /FS:RAW" but it gives me the
the exact same error message.

any ideas on how to remedy the situation?
thank you very much

 

[Martin]

Hello all,

this post might be a little off-topic, but perhaps some of you wiz' knows
the solution to my annoying problem.

I was formatting my friend's HD today through the windows XP installer,
and noticed a 510 Meg partition when i was in the partitioning step in the
windows XP installation routine. i thought it was an unused partition so i
deleted it in order to consolidate its space with the rest of the
available drive space.

However, i noticed - after the fact - that the partition i had just
deleted was the flash memory on my friend's USB MP3 player that was
plugged to the PC!!!!!! It is a Sandisk SDMX1 512 Meg MP3 player.

so now, the partition on my friend's MP3 player has been deleted, the
drive is no longer formatted, and i can't see the drive space anymore on
my windows file explorer. I tried to format it through the format utility
integrated to Windows, but it said that it could not format the drive.
I also tried through the "format" command in a windows command line
prompt, but could not manage to format it this way either. It says
"Filesystem type is RAW. Use the /FS commutator to specifiy the filesustem
that you wish to use on this volume" (translation from french, perhaps not
the precise error message in english). I also typed "format h: /FS:RAW"
but it gives me the the exact same error message.

any ideas on how to remedy the situation?
thank you very much

Have you tried Control Panel > Admin Tools > Computer Management.
Select Disk Management under the Storage tree.

Here you should be able to see the (possibly) unpartititioned and
unformatted MP3 player as a drive.
Right-click on it and you should get the options to (re)create the partition
(if necessary) and also format it.

By the way, if you type:

format /?

at the Command Prompt you'll get the help settings for the format
command.........

Formats a disk for use with Windows XP.

FORMAT volume [/FS:file-system] [/V:label] [/Q] [/A:size] [/C] [/X]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/F:size]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q] [/T:tracks /N:sectors]
FORMAT volume [/V:label] [/Q]
FORMAT volume [/Q]

volume Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon),
mount point, or volume name.
/FS:filesystem Specifies the type of the file system (FAT, FAT32, or
NTFS).
/V:label Specifies the volume label.
/Q Performs a quick format.
/C NTFS only: Files created on the new volume will be
compressed
by default.
/X Forces the volume to dismount first if necessary. All
opened
handles to the volume would no longer be valid.
/A:size Overrides the default allocation unit size. Default
settings
are strongly recommended for general use.
NTFS supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K.
FAT supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).
FAT32 supports 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16K, 32K, 64K,
(128K, 256K for sector size > 512 bytes).

Note that the FAT and FAT32 files systems impose the
following restrictions on the number of clusters on a
volume:

FAT: Number of clusters <= 65526
FAT32: 65526 < Number of clusters < 4177918

Format will immediately stop processing if it decides that
the above requirements cannot be met using the specified
cluster size.

NTFS compression is not supported for allocation unit
sizes
above 4096.

/F:size Specifies the size of the floppy disk to format (1.44)
/T:tracks Specifies the number of tracks per disk side.
/N:sectors Specifies the number of sectors per track.

HTH.

Martin.

 

[kony]

i
deleted it in order to consolidate its space with the rest of the available
drive space.

However, i noticed - after the fact - that the partition i had just deleted
was the flash memory on my friend's USB MP3 player

I tried to format it through the format utility
integrated to Windows, but it said that it could not format the drive.

After a good night's sleep, i'm sure you'll realize that you
can't format it because there is no partition to format yet.
Create one.

 

[BlastUK]

do this and format as a "FAT" partition.. not fat32, not ntfs

 

[Zed Rafi]

you're right....
i created a partition through the windows computer management console, then
formatted and it works!

 

[kony]

do this and format as a "FAT" partition.. not fat32, not ntfs

Actually if it will run from FAT32, he might as well use
FAT32. Some do, some don't... dont' recall on that one but
suspect it does.

 

[BlastUK]

most memory cards and like run FAT just because its used for simple
file storing and nothing fancy, but.. whatever floats your boat

 

[kony]

most memory cards and like run FAT just because its used for simple
file storing and nothing fancy, but.. whatever floats your boat

Sure, they can... or if you can use FAT32 then you have a
couple of significant benefits:

1) Less wasted space
2) Far higher # of files possible in the root.