details on howto re-format a USB flash drive?

[David H. Cook]

My USB flash-drive (which happens to be a Lexar 128-MB jump-drive)
either got
accidently partially re-formated by a co-worker or else it has just
developed
'bad-blocks'. I'm not sure which.

So, now the questions relate to how, if possible, to re-format the
drive.

e.g. should I choose 'FAT32' or just 'FAT'?

I tried on Win-XP to format it (as FAT32). It formatted part way for a
few seconds,
then 'bombed out'. So, do I need to include 'size' info when I format
it? Or, did it
bomb-out because of the format-type that I chose?

I also can NOT rule out the possibility that the drive became 'damaged'
in some way.
Maybe there is size-info on the drive, but maybe a portion of the drive
further in
now has 'bad blocks'??

The current symptoms, when I insert it into various computers (all of
which ONCE
knew how to access it just fine), now recognize it as a 'flash-drive'
and appear
to mount it ok. But, when I try to access it, they all now give the
same
symptom: I typically get a 'Windows - delayed write failed' msg after
about 30
seconds. Before that, the drive mounts and a drive-letter gets
assigned ok.
It says 'removeable drive', which is correct. When I then try to
explicitly access
that drive, after a long timeout, I get a popup window, saying:

F:\ is not accessible. The file or directory is corrupted and
unreadable.

Ok. So, is re-formatting the right idea? If so, can someone point me
to a detailed
explanation of howto properly re-format it?

TIA...

Dave

 

[Ted Zieglar]

"Lexar Support - If You've Got Questions We're Here to Help"
http://www.lexar.com/support/index.html

 

[Richard Urban]

Hewlett Packard has a small utility called Drive Key. It is specifically for
formatting a key drive. I have successfully used it on a few different types
of drives

See here:
http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqdt/us/download/20306.html

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!

 

[Guest]

Hi, Is the computer that has xp on it, installed on fat32 or ntfs. If the
latter xp won't format your flash fat32, only the NT filing system. If on the
fat32, mount the flash drive, put a boot disk in your floppy port, go to
start, accessories, command prompt,
at the prompt type, a: at the command prompt type format"space"G:"enter"
G=your flash drive, it will look like this A:\>format G: make sure you
space after format then hit enter. Hope this helps

 

[David H. Cook]

Nope, G-MAN, you are incorrect. The format-type of a flash-drive
NEED NOT match the format-type of the hard-drive.

And, your 'generic' way of formatting does NOT work for the flash-drive
does NOT work, as I mentioned in the base-note. When I try that,
it bombs, as I said.

That said, I WAS able to solve the problem, using the info from some
of the OTHER repliers. That HP-tool worked, as did the advice that
the Lexar support folks finally sent to me.

Cheers...

Dave