SanDisk Cruzer Mini 512 mb Drive Error

[ardengiz911]

Hi I'm having a problem with my cruzer mini 512 mb flash drive. For about the past two months, a friend and I have been swapping drives every week and sharing various files. After taking files off my drive one time, I went back to put files back onto it and it gave me a "Please insert a disk into drive:" dialog box.

From then on I am unable to use my drive, and if I try to navigate to the directory it's in, explorer crashes and resets itself. I have tried using the drive on all my computers (98SE PIII, XP pro AMD, XP home AMD), with no success. Here are some of the specs of the computer where the error first was seen.

-ECS K7VTA motherboard
-AMD Athlon XP 2600+
-512 mb PC2700 RAM
-XP Pro

other specs (like hard drive, mouse, etc seem irrelevant)

Every once in a while, the drive will come up properly, but will be shown on my computer with 0 bytes max compacity, and under disk manager it reads as unreadable. The other thing though is that this drive belongs to my friend, and I'll have to dish out $70 to replace it. I will appreciate any assistance or information regarding my problem.

 

[micker377]

If you can get a computer to recognize it, just re-format it like you would a floppy.

 

[ardengiz911]

If only it were that simple... When I try to reformat the drive, it either does nothing, or gives an error saying that the drive is unformattable. I have tried following suggestions on the SanDisk site, but they have not worked. If anyone knows how to solve this problem, please tell me. I will try to get a replacement through the store it was purchased from or through the manufacturer's warrantee.

 

[ardengiz911]

Fortunate day for me...I was able to initiate formatting the drive in 98SE, until it gave me an error saying it could not continue. When I put the drive into my XP computer, it displayed a box saying it was not formatted and needed to be. I was able to format it then. Thanks anyway micker377 for your post.