This is a long story so hold on...

I extracted the hdd from my dead mp3 player because i was bored and quite liked the idea of getting a free (sorta) 8gb compact flash card. my printer has a built in card reader so i popped the microdrive in and it showed up on the computer fine. the filesystem that the mp3 player used isn't compatible with windows so i right clicked and chose format and nothing happened. so i tried just opening the drive in my computer. it said something like 'drive I needs to be formatted. Do you want to fomat now?" i clicked yes. it then says "drive I could not be formatted" Hmm i thought and checked the card was in properly. i noticed on the screen on the printer said  "The inserted card cannot be used with this printer" so i looked up the specs of the printer and the microdrive on the internet and apparently they're both compatible. (both support Compat Flash 2).

so, does anyone know what's going on? and before you ask, the microdrive isn't broken. The mp3 player died because i corruped the firmware when the firmware update went wrong. I can hear the little hdd spin up fine and i can hear it reading/writing (the sort of crunchy sound that computer hard drives make when they read/write)