Flash Drive problem

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I put some music on a friends flash drive for him to stick on his computer, he said he "did something" that removed everything from his flash drive, the flash drive is an "Integral" flash drive. Now the flash drive is a 4GB flash drive but now with no files on it, it is saying there is only 1.95MB of space on it.

Does anyone have any ideas on how to fix it

 

He needs to figure out what "something" he did, or he owes you a flash drive and an apology for nuking your files.

Then again, sharing of music isn't exactly something I look too keenly on anyway...

I'd recommend reformatting.

 

Sounds very much to me like Windows Readyboost (Vista using space on the stick as a drive for disk cache) has screwed up somehow.

Did you friend use the drive with Windows Vista?

If it's not this or hidden files then yeah... reformat. Should solve both of the aforementioned problems.

Qs

 

I have checked if they were hidden (no joy there) the OS he is using is Windows XP home, i also reformated the drive still the same tho (1.95MB)

 

Hmm... maybe its got a screwed up partition or something...

Read this article and follow what it says. I'd recommend downloading the software mentioned too.

Let us know how it goes.

 

It would only let me format as FAT and yes it was only MP3 files on it, nothing else

 

Did what the article said, it did give me an extra option this time on the format file type instead of just FAT it also gave me NTFS this time, selected NTFS and it wouldnt let me format it, tried FAT again and it would let me format it

 

Normally you can only format USB drives as FAT/FAT32. You can't force an NTFS format through command prompt nor right-click the drive and format that way.

To enable NTFS as a format option change the policy on the device from Optimize for quick removal to Optimize for performance.

To change the policy - rightclick the drive - go to properties. Click Hardware tab -> Select USB drive -> Click properties -> Click Policies.

This should give you the option to format as NTFS (using either method listed above)

Let us know how it goes.

NB - This is the only known way (IIRC) to add the NTFS format option to USB drives. I know its touched upon in the previous article I suggested but just make sure you're doing it correctly. If it still doesn't work then I'd ask your friend to get you a new flash drive.

 

tried what you said.....no joy! Thanks for the help guys, just have to be more carefull in future

 

I also tried the Vista machine, thats didnt work either! well looks like it has had it, just have to be more carefull in the future