Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Ever corrupt a USB Stick? Well fix it! (And make it a bootable USB drive too!)

Hi folks,
Today's topic is a little off the usual Social Media / Web type stuff. It's time for a little IT talk. Why you ask? Well mainly because I toasted (corrupted) a USB stick and I was too lazy to run out to Staples and buy another one. So here goes.

If you have a little glitch on the old PC and suddenly find your 16gb stick reports something like 6MB, lent it to a Mac user who formatted it or pops up an icon when installed but clicking it causes an error, here's what you do. (Process tested on Win7):

  1. Connect your USB Stick
  2. Go to start menu and in search box type: cmd
  3. In resulting DOS window type: diskpart.exe (Pops up new window)
  4. In new window at diskpart prompt type:  list disk
  5. At diskpart prompt Type: select disk n where n is the number that corresponds to the USB disk (correct size will be shown in list).
  6. Confirm that you're using the right disk by typing: detail disk In details “Type” will say USB.
  7. At diskpart prompt Type:  clean
  8. At diskpart prompt Type:  create partition primary
  9. At diskpart prompt Type:  active (makes it possible to create a bootable USB Drive)
  10. At diskpart prompt Type:  format fs=fat32 quick
  11. At diskpart prompt Type:  assign
  12. At diskpart prompt Type:  exit

Once this is done if you want to go another step you can use this program to create a bootable USB Drive (very handy if you need to troubleshoot an OS Problem):

See the second screen shot to see what the "Type" value looks like. Make sure when you do step 5 you enter the correct drive number! Much pain will ensue if you get this wrong. Make sure to check as shown in step 6. Either way no boo-hooing!

Screen shots:






















Article written by Adam Signore
Adam Signore is the owner of Signore Web Design. A company providing Web Design, Social Media Marketing and Custom Facebook Application Development. To learn more about Adam check him out on:

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