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Somehow my USB flash drive is broken. When I plug it into my Windows 7 PC it appears in Windows Explorer, but I cannot format/access it; I get the "insert disk" message every time I try to access/format the drive.

What can I do to get it working again?

vivi
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Max
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1 Answers1

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Since you didn't provide any details about the drive it's hard to provide any detailed steps to help you. The fallback thing to do is try it on a different machine - Windows and something else, too. Sometimes Mac or Linux machines might be able to see it.
If they don't recognize it, you're probably out of luck. There may be a specific utility for your flash drive that might help.
In my experience though, a dead USB stick is dead. It's not even worth the shipping to RMA it unless it's a very pricey model.

valsidalv
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  • There aren't much details, the drive is just recognized as "Generic USB Flash Disk USB Device". It has 4GB, I got it as a giveaway. – Max Oct 08 '13 at 16:29
  • Fair enough. It was free so no big loss to you. However try this utility [SD Formatter](https://www.sdcard.org/downloads/formatter_4/). Also, if you can see the drive in your BIOS there is hope, so you may want to check that out first. – valsidalv Oct 08 '13 at 16:38
  • Thank you for the suggestions. I tried both of them, it neither shows up in my BIOS nor in SD Fomatter. Apparently I have to ditch the drive :( – Max Oct 08 '13 at 16:56