USB flash drive cannot be read only on a specific computer

08
2014-07
  • Roy

    I have a SanDisk Cruzer 32gb flash drive that cannot be read only on a specific computer due to some unknown reason. Do note that all my other flash drives are working fine on this computer. Here's my situation...

    Background Info

    I recently bought a HP laptop. Before wiping the laptop's hard disk, I used HP recovery media creator to store the HP recovery image in my flash drive. After I was done with wiping my laptop's hard disk and making sure my clean installation of the operating system works, I wiped my flash drive with the standard Windows formatting utility. I don't like the OEM's recovery stuffs because of all the bloatware, but I backed it up to my flash drive just in case my clean installation fails.

    The Problem

    Now, this flash drive cannot be read on my main desktop (running Windows 8) anymore. However, the same flash drive can be read on my other two computers (also running Windows 8) perfectly fine.

    Observations:

    • The flash drive cannot be accessed in Windows Explorer or any Explorer alternatives.
    • Received "Windows can't access this disk" error messages when trying to check the disk's filesystem.
    • The flash drive's size cannot be viewed in My Computer.

    Ironically, according to the Device Manager, the USB flash drive is detected and working fine.

    Things I've Tried

    • Uninstalling the USB mass storage driver and rebooting.
    • Uninstalling all USB drivers and rebooting.
    • Wiping and reformatting my flash drive on the computers that it can work on using MiniTool Partition Wizard.
    • Using BootIce to rewrite the MBR of the flash drive.
    • Copying the MBR of my other flash drives to the problem flash drive using BootIce.
    • I've also tried formatting in FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS.

    All of the above methods have failed. Does anyone know what's the problem, or have encountered such errors before? Please enlighten me. Your help is much appreciated.

    Thank you. =)

    • Answers
  • Dave Rook

    I've had this exact issue but never got it resolved; The work around (as I was not able to fix it) was to copy the data to another flash drive!


    • Related Question

    Laptop will boot to some usb flash drives but not others
  • evolvd

    Laptop: HP Compaq 6710b

    I can boot from usb just fine with the following usb flash drives:

    • Cruzer micro 4GB
    • HP 4GB

    The flash drive that will not boot:

    • Flash Voyager 8GB

    To knock out variables I did the following:

    • Using Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool I performed a low level format
    • Full erase with Flash Memory Tookit
    • In windows 7 I formated the drive to fat32
    • Used USB-Boot-Tester to write to the drive
    • Also used uNetbooting with various distros to see if that would make a difference

    My guesses on what could be preventing the drive from booting:

    • The laptop does not support booting to usb flash drives larger than 4GB
    • The drive is defective in some way

    • Related Answers
  • barlop

    have you tried HPUSBFW.EXE (HP USB disk format storage tool)
    try FAT16(which it calls FAT I think), FAT32, NTFS I see it available here http://codinguniverse.com/files/HPUSBFW.EXE a slightly newer version is 2MB as oppose to 440KB.

    Or, much newer versions of the HP thing. which they call HP drive key boot utility about 44MB!

    FAT16 is limited to 2GB, so see how that goes.. try FAT32 , and try NTFS.. I haven't tried it in a long while..