4 replies to this topic

[iGuest]

how to open the flash driveInstalling A New Disk Drive

hi,

I am trying to open my USB flash drive( sandisk-1GB, Red color) in my laptop (O.S.-XP SP2, Vista) but the message appears of formatting but I don't want to format it because it contains various important files. Please help me and tell  how to open my flash drive.

-question by Ajit

[Idolon]

Has anything changed in how you use the drive, or did the reformat message start appearing with no apparent cause?  

Your drive may have become corrupted.  If so, you'll need to find some sort of data recovery software to recover your files, or some companies also offer data retrieval services.  Even then, if your drive is corrupted you may not be able to recover all of your files.  If the files are truly important, you may want to have a specialist look at the drive and see if it is recoverable.  It will probably cost you quite a bit to get it recovered though.  

If the reformat message appeared the first time you used the drive on your Windows machine and you originally formatted it using another operating system like Linux, your flash drive might be using file system that Windows doesn't recognize.  This probably isn't the case, but if you have a Linux machine, try opening the drive there.

If this is, as the second line of the post states, a new flash drive, then I don't see how there could be any files on it to begin with.  If this is the first time you've used it, it may not have preformatted, in which case, you will have to format it yourself.

In the future, if there are important files on your flash drive, you should keep a backup copy of them somewhere in case something like this happens.

[iworld200]

(G)Ajit, on Jul 6 2009, 09:02 AM, said:

how to open the flash drive
Installing A New Disk Drive

hi,

I am trying to open my USB flash drive( sandisk-1GB, Red color) in my laptop (O.S.-XP SP2, Vista) but the message appears of formatting but I don't want to format it because it contains various important files. Please help me and tell how to open my flash drive.

-question by Ajit

ok, u can do 1 thing, you just click on start-button once, then go to logoff and then press ok,
then when the system asks to provide the login name and password; use a different name and password {create a diff user acc before using this method},
now probably this problem should not occur.
i tried it and it works.

[Idolon]

I have absolutely no idea how that would change anything.
If Windows wants to format the drive, it's likely either corrupted or not formatted in a way that Windows recognizes (or not formatted at all).  Logging in a another user won't fix the flash drive.

If that actually works, I'll be very surprised.  That surprise will be very shortly followed by *facepalm* and a total loss of what little faith I had left in Microsoft.

[Saint_Michael]

I have to agree it wouldn't change a thing, best thing to do is try another computer and see if it recognizes it at all, also look to see if there is any damage to the USB itself or if it overheats at all. I would check to see what kind of support scandisk has for problems like this, but odds are if it can't recovered your files are lost and sadly, that is 99% of the time.