USB 3.0 Flash Drive Problems

Hey guys,

So I recently received a 16GB USB 3.0 flash drive in the mail because my other flash drive broke and I'm getting a laptop that has USB 3.0.

Since i'm interested in Chrome OS, I decided to write an image onto the drive, which I did. Bored because it was slow and Chrome OS didn't recognize my network, I then rebooted my laptop and proceeded to format my drive to its original state.

After the formatting was done, I was only left with a 1GB usable flash drive, and after deleting some volumes in disk management into unallocated space (like the idiot I am), the flash drive doesn't even show up under "my computer" anymore. In device manager though the drive shows up fine.

What the partitions look like can be seen in the attachment.

Please help, I don't to lose this flash drive too!

Stradevarius

PS - Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, as there is no trouble shooting forum.

 

Go into Disk Management (the screen shot you're showing...) and delete all the partitions.

Once you have a single area as 'unallocated' space, create a single partition and format. Then, you should be fine.

With most USB Keys, if they have more than a single partition on them, Windows will not recognize them easily.

Good luck.

 

I tried deleting all the partitions, that was my original idea, but then it wouldn't let me delete some of the healthy partitions. When I try to change the disk drive letter or such, disk management says there is an error and must be refreshed (to no avail).

 

I've fixed it! Through my google searches I've actually seen a few other people had the same problem that I have had so i'll post a solution so if this thread pops up, they will have an answer.

The trick is to delete all the partitions then create a single partition and format, as tilleroftheearth suggested, but the windows disk management can be very limited and grey out a lot of options, or send error messages.

I downloaded this partition software from Easeus Partition Master Home Edition - Free software downloads and software reviews - CNET Downloads which is much better than the baked in windows 7 services. I located my disk, deleted all partitions, created a single new partition and then hit apply. After this my disk showed up but was unreadable, and windows was still unable to format it, so I went into the program, formatted the drive and clicked apply. After removing the drive and plugging it back in, It worked!

Hope this helps anyone with this problem, as I really didn't want to return the drive and go through all that hassle.

Stradevarius

 

Thank you very much for providing the details on how you fixed it.

Also glad to point you in the right direction too.