USB Drive Problem in XP

[Doug Harrington]

I've been having a strange problem with a new 16gb USB drive. If I
plug it into a certain USB port on my PC, it reads it fine. If I plug
it into another (right next to it), it detects the drive but shows it
in RAW format and asks to format it. I have the same issue at work
with it - on one PC (also running XP) both USB ports on it detect the
drive in RAW format. I take it over to another PC and plug it in, and
it detects it.

What gives? Is this a driver issue or is something wrong with the
drive? I did have to format it using KillDisk for Windows when I got
it, I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

Thanks.

 

[smlunatick]

I've been having a strange problem with a new 16gb USB drive.  If I
plug it into a certain USB port on my PC, it reads it fine.  If I plug
it into another (right next to it), it detects the drive but shows it
in RAW format and asks to format it.  I have the same issue at work
with it - on one PC (also running XP) both USB ports on it detect the
drive in RAW format.  I take it over to another PC and plug it in, and
it detects it.

What gives?  Is this a driver issue or is something wrong with the
drive?  I did have to format it using KillDisk for Windows when I got
it, I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

Thanks.

You will need to copy off all the files you want to save and then
format it with Disk Management. KillDisk is not normally part of any
versions of XP. KillDisk does a "low-level" format and might not
place a "filesystem" (either FAT 32 or NTFS) back on correctly. With
XP's Disk Management, you can format the flash disk os that XP can see
it.

 

[M.I.5¾]

I've been having a strange problem with a new 16gb USB drive. If I
plug it into a certain USB port on my PC, it reads it fine. If I plug
it into another (right next to it), it detects the drive but shows it
in RAW format and asks to format it. I have the same issue at work
with it - on one PC (also running XP) both USB ports on it detect the
drive in RAW format. I take it over to another PC and plug it in, and
it detects it.

What gives? Is this a driver issue or is something wrong with the
drive? I did have to format it using KillDisk for Windows when I got
it, I don't know if that had anything to do with it.

Other possibilities are that the USB port on the disc drive is marginal on
performance or that some part of the drive has an intermittent fault.