I am on Vista to home, and that is great, as if my flashdrive gets corrupted I just plug it in and it sorts it out. At work however we are on XP, which doesn't do that, and we have old computers which are forever killing flashdrives.
I am FED UP of either having to take my laptop into work, or coming home with a pocketful of everyone else's dead flashdrives to sort out. Is there anything portable out there (no, I can't install on work computers) because apparently we are going Thin Client soon, and even that doesn't have anything either.
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Somehow I have a problem wrapping my mind around the concept that Vista has the power to resurrect dead flash drives. But I do know that XP is not "killing" them, per se.
Vista does have a cool idea called ReadyBoost that allows a computer to use a single flash drive as expansion RAM. (Windows 7 will let you use as many as you can plug in.) Aside from the fact it doesn't actually work, it's not what you're talking about.
Vista has a thing for running a disk integrity check on flash drives every time they're plugged in. Is that what you mean? It's been a few months since I've used Vista (thank God) but I seem to remember it doing that. Pretty sure it just used the old Windows disk checking, perhaps with a new look to it. The latest version of the PortableApps.com platform (2.0 beta 3) has that built in. Same thing. The one built into Windows.
But the integrity check won't save a dead flash drive. What it can do, for hard drives, is flag sectors as bad. Flash drives are written to differently; you can't flag a sector like you can with a hard drive. An integrity check can extend the life of a hard drive by forcing the operating system to avoid bad sectors, but it can't do anything of the sort for flash drives.
That said, there are a few portable disk tools, I'm sure people will be happy to recommend their favorites. Mine don't do what you're looking for though. Still, some of the things that help to extend the life of hard drives - like defragmenting - are bad for flash drives.
It's integrity checking only; it somehow detects that you didn't eject it properly and thus something may be wrong. It won't fix dead drives. All that it can do is fix up bad file references and similar, or tell you that your disk is broken beyond repair. The latest beta of the PortableApps.com Platform has an option to scan for errors (though it won't detect automatically that it should do so).
The best solution is not to pull it out without unmounting and ejecting it properly - then it'll never need to do it.
I am a Christian and a developer and moderator here.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.” – Proverbs 15:1
kill flash drives, either they are dead allready or have been missused too much.
Formating utility for stick is:
HP USB Disk storage formating toll (google)
or
HP drive key boot utility (google)
otherwise take any propper formating tool like Parted Magic , this is a life CD so you download the iso and off you go. If this can not reformat the stick , it is dead for ever, simply bay crashing the internal operating system or similar. Will happen with sooo cheap, give away and e-bay bargains simply more often then with stick from reputable sources.
Repair on the virtual file system like FAT32 can be done, repair on the actual 'flash file system ' is for us users not possible unsless you have manuafacturers low level set up tool for that.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
I got a program from Patriot Memory for formatting my flash drive. Be careful it does erase everything. You might want to check with your drive manufacturer.
if it does format to normal FAT32 or FAT or some other similar file systems, then it is doing the same job as windows formating or any other tool. It creates virtual file system carried by the internal flash file system. The utils which will work on the internal system are probably not very easy to be obtained, manufacturers keep them kind of secret since lot of bad things can be done with it, even no 'normal' operating system can read such flash file system directly, there are ways to pass then infos to the virtual file system later. This allows then people to set size info of let say 16GB into the controller and in fact the flash can take only 4GB etc.
Are you able to enter such infos to the controller of your flash?
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
The flash formator resets the flash back to original as if new. It sets up the drive to FAT32.
The point of the HP-USB format tool (and it's clones)
is that it does not do the same job as the OS, see :
http://www.boot-land.net/forums/?showtopic=2246&st=15
@ The OP :
Was your flash-drive formatted under XP or Vista ?
It can make a difference, see :
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=48309
as to what is wrong w/ the flashdrives you have. Is it a crappy generic brand? Is there a particular computer or user that is getting back bad drives?
Don't be an uberPr∅. They are stinky.
...I ALWAYS have received the "failed disk integrity check" in vista & the USB has ALWAYS functioned perfectly. I didn't even dare to click the "solve problems" or the similar button (translated form spanish)