How to fix a damaged USB thumb drive

*** NOTE *** This only works if you don't care about the existing data on the drive.


If your USB thumb drive is acting flaky, try reformatting it.

An easy way to do this is to open a Command Prompt window and type: format X: where X: is the drive letter of the USB (so if it's the E drive, type "format E:").

But that might fail. If it comes back with "Invalid Media, Track 0 Bad", don't throw it away!

Instead, do the following:

1) Open a Command Prompt window as Administrator (right click on it to do this)

Steps 2 through the end are what you type at the DISKPART> prompt, so do that....

2) list disk

(You will see a list of disks. Note the one that is your flash drive -- usually it will be listed as something like 3800 MB. Note the number of that disk, which is often 1). Substitute that number for X below.

3) select disk X

4) clean all

5) create partition primary

6) select partition 1

7) active

8) format

(if it formats correctly, you are in great shape. if it still comes up with errors, toss it in the garbage)

9) assign

10) exit

Close the window, and the drive should be usable.


:nerds