"Healing" a USB flash drive

[ode2joy]

This is more a curiosity question than anything, but is there any way to “heal” a USB flash drive so it can be used again? I ran into an error while trying to write an .iso to it using Rufus, and now I can’t get it to get to a point where I can format it and use it for something else. If I plug it in, it shows a drive letter, but it’s rather grayed out:

If I try to format it, it says “there is no disk in drive D:. Insert a disk, and then try again.”

I tried running the ‘clean’ command after selecting this disk in DISKPART, but that also tells me there is no media in the device.

I was able to burn the .iso to another drive and there’s no data on this drive that I need to recover, so now it’s just the principle of the thing. It’s entirely possible the drive is just dead, but it was brand new out of my stock. I’d hate to just trash a 32GB drive it if it’s fixable and I can learn something in the process. TIA!

[ooaverage]

Weirdly Rufus has been what saved me in previous cases. I’ve had more than one instance where cleaning in DISKPART left me with a drive that I couldn’t get into, and somehow rufus put it back in a usable state. (Granted, these were the cheapo silver amazon drives that aren’t always that reliable anyway.)

[ode2joy]

Yeah, Rufus doesn’t even detect it as a device:

My guess is this drive is just a dud, but just wanted to see if there were any other tricks to try. Thanks!

[JohnFreeman]

When a USB drive acts like this, showing “no media” or refusing to format, it’s usually a sign that something deeper is wrong like a firmware or controller failure, not just a bad partition. That said, there are still a couple of things you can try if you’re determined. First, you can run a tool like ChipGenius or ChipEasy to identify the specific USB controller chip. If it’s something like a Phison or Alcor controller, there might be a manufacturer-specific low-level tool available that can reinitialize the drive. If you can identify the controller model, search for something like “Phison MPTool” or “Alcor Recovery Utility” with that model number. These tools are kind of hit or miss but sometimes they can bring a bricked drive back. Another option is to boot into a Linux live environment and see if the drive shows up in lsblk or dmesg. If Linux can’t see it either and says “no media,” it’s probably toast. You could try using dd to write zeros to it if Linux does recognize it, but again, that depends on whether the drive is even talking to the system at a low level. Realistically, if both Windows and Linux say there’s no media and the controller tools don’t help, it’s probably a dead drive. Some bulk USB sticks fail even when they’re brand new. Might be worth running something like H2testw or FakeFlashTest on your remaining stock just to check for other bad ones. At this point, it sounds like you’ve done everything right and even if the drive is done for, you’ve probably learned more from troubleshooting it than from using it.

[agenglercain]

Once a USB drive starts acting up its going into the fire. Fool me once…Fool me twice.

[GrayRabbit]

It’s dead, Jim. Hardware failure. I’ve had USB drives of all varieties do this, both out of the box and from heavy use. I used to have bad luck with Sandisk and Kensington, which surprised me. Samsung so far has been solid for me. The off-brand stuff has been hit-or-miss.

The key lesson: USB drives are NOT to be trusted for long-term storage.

[ode2joy]

@GrayRabbit

The key lesson: USB drives are NOT to be trusted for long-term storage.

Wouldn’t dream of it, McCoy. This was more just a fun exercise because I had a quiet afternoon. I believe I’ve surmised it is indeed dead.

[ode2joy]

@JohnFreeman

Another option is to boot into a Linux live environment and see if the drive shows up in lsblk or dmesg.

Gave that a shot and got nuthin. Ran out of free time, so I’ve decided it is toast and just trashed it, but I had fun playing around for a bit! Thanks!

[GrayRabbit]

Don’t forget to destroy the drive in an appropriate fashion. There’s a gun range next to the BBQ place we sometimes go for lunch. It’s common to go to the BBQ place, place an order and give them a time you’d like to be seated, then go next door and fire off a few rounds. I’ve “disposed” of many hard drives and other storage devices over there while waiting for lunch.

[somedude2]

There’s a fun game, can you hit a USB stick at 300 yards…
(No cheating with the scope ;p )

[spiceuser-6s3i]

I agree. I also think, it’s dead.
I bought 10 pieces of 64Gb Kingston DataTraveler Exodia 3.2 and within a year, 5 have broken up. Four of them showed ‘Write Protected’, one recognized by Window and after 20-30 second disappeared.
One main reason seemed to have caused the breakage. Heavy use caused too much heat and RAM chip’s solder failed inside USB stick. I repaired three of them by soldering, two of them I could not repair.
Despite warranty, I threw them to trash can, because these only cost about 5 dollars piece.
By the way, I am surprised my 4Gb USB 2.0 Kingston Data Traveler Elite still works today, despite it is 25 years old

[ode2joy]

@GrayRabbit

Don’t forget to destroy the drive in an appropriate fashion. There’s a gun range next to the BBQ place we sometimes go for lunch.

I’m almost disappointed the only thing on that drive was a half-written .iso of Hiren’s Boot CD. Otherwise, this would sound like an absolute blast!

[Jay-Updegrove]

So, it probably isn’t going to help in this case but…it’s still best-practice to avoid using “reserved” drive letters for things like this so maybe next time, don’t give a flash drive the D:\ slot (or A:\ B:\ etc.) just to rule it out. Rufus might be seeing D:\ and ignoring it because it’s supposed to be an optical media drive, not flash.