Endless Paradigm

Okay, so I bought a 2GB flash drive a year ago.  It's the biggest and fastest flash drive I've ever had.  Interestingly, today, it seems like it decided to stop working...
Was at Uni, using Portable Firefox, then at some point in time, I decided I wanted to open some other file on the flash drive.  Interestingly, Windows popped up with "Please insert a disk in drive E:".  Okay, closed Portable Firefox, unplugged the drive, and put it back in, said same thing.  Tried on another computer, exactly the same thing.  Does the same at home too.
The nice thing is that when you try to format, Windows complains that there's no drive to format, so you're stuck with Windows saying that it can find the drive, and the drive exists, but when you try to access it, it claims that it doesn't exist...

Doing a Google (wow, does that actually make sense?), I found some suggestions - either use Windows 9x / Linux to try formatting or use HP's drive utility.  For Windows 9x, my nForce4 chipset doesn't like it.  Linux LiveCDs won't work either since I have a SATA based CD drive and HP's utility refuses to work on Windows XP x64.

Great.  I may try some things over the weekend, but it looks like I've lost a drive...

that is unfortunate :(

yeah that sucks . . . but I wish I had a 2gb flash drive.

If you have one of those weird old things called a floppy drive you could use partition magic to create boot floppies and reformat the drive using those.

I'll probably install Linux over the weekend, or try the HP utility on my XP 32.  I still don't think they'll grant much more success...

I have a 4GB SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drive its damn small.. really brilliant as it has U3 technology... maybe get one.

Also I got it for £23 aka 56.4229 AUD from Costco (Dedat knows what I'm talking about)

I stopped using flash drives years ago,

I just take my MP4 player everywhere with me,

i need a new flash drive ive been using a 256mb swissmemory i found but the chip keeps coming out of the case ive super glued it in like 5 times lol
might get a cruzer its like £10 for a 2gb here lol

Nacos Wrote:I have a 4GB SanDisk Cruzer USB flash drive its damn small.. really brilliant as it has U3 technology... maybe get one.

Also I got it for £23 aka 56.4229 AUD from Costco (Dedat knows what I'm talking about)

yup, i have the same one.. the u3 thingy is cool. you get loadsa programs that you can install on the pendrive..like a full version of firefox and such things. i actually got mone from amazon for £17.99..but yeah they are really good and if you are thinking of getting a new one i would reccomend a 4gb sandisk cruzer with u3 technology.

Can't you use a linux disk like Knoppix instead of installing it over the weekend?