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Low-Level Format For a USB Flash Drive?
Luyseyal writes "I unwittingly bought one of these terrible flash cards at Fry's and have managed to nuke two of them, successively. I have a USB flash card reader that will read/write the current one at USB 1.0 speed, but it locks up every Ubuntu and XP machine I've come across in high-speed access mode. I have read that if I low-level format it that it could be fixed, though my current one doesn't support it. My Google-fu must be weak because I cannot seem to find a USB flash reader that specifies that it will do low-level formatting." Can anyone offer advice for resurrecting such drives?
You don't know what low-level format means, do you?
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
It's also not a low-level format. Google that before you make yourself look like an idiot.
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In short: you're screwed. Unless you've got important data on them (ie not recoverable from a different source), throw them out and pick up some more (preferably a different model, at least until this one improves.)
What you've got on your hands there is defective flash (likely). There is no 'recovering' it as a storage medium. In essence, you paid for a 16GB, $40 floppy drive. Next time, unless you've got an overt need for 16GB all on one card, get several smaller ones. Sure, you're "throwing away" your cards; maybe you should've RMA'd them sooner as defective.
I'm somewhat surprised that the A-DATA memory is bad, on account of them not being known for crap quality. On the other hand, most vendors seem to pick and choose flash memory chips by price: there really is no consistency from even one card to the next within the same lots, it seems.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
I think most people don't. Unless you're doing it to a floppy or an OLD MFM/RLL style hard disk, those "low-level" formatter programs don't DO what people think they do. All they do is a full-disk zero write which triggers a device re-init to factory config which does a recalibration in some cases, and maps spare blocks (if possible) to bad-block spots so the disk looks pristine at the filesystem level. This also works for flash based devices after a fashion.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
"all it does is {list of multiple items which are each much more useful than a traditional 'low-level' format}"
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