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    Flash drive problem

    Discussion in 'Panasonic' started by erichzeppelin, Jan 3, 2011.

  1. erichzeppelin

    erichzeppelin Notebook Guru

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    I have a CF-28M. I bought an HP 4GB flash drive and loaded the manual for the 28 onto it from my wife's computer, when I stuck the flash drive into the back of the 28 a warning popped up telling me I had to unplug and flip it. When I got out of that, it told me to insert a disk into drive E.................What???????
     
    erichzeppelin, Jan 3, 2011
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  2. mnementh

    mnementh Crusty Ol' TinkerDwagon

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    Power the ToughBook off, reboot. Try the USB thumb drive again, this time making sure it is oriented so that the thicker side is aligned with the hole in the USB port.

    What has happened is that you inserted the USB drive backwards; this made the metal hood short out the power connectors in the USB port. That's when the laptop popped up the warning message. Hopefully, you did NOT break the insulating plastic part inside the USB port by inserting the drive backwards; some of them can be pretty fragile.

    You usually need to power off the laptop completely to make the USB port overload protection circuitry reset; once you boot up again, you should be able to read from it.

    If your wife's machine is Vista or Win7, it may have allowed you to format the USB drive in eXFAT format; if you've done so, you won't be able to read or write to it from WinXP or earlier.

    mnem
    USB-ity.
     
    mnementh, Jan 3, 2011
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