Reformatting USB Drives

"Because USB cables include their power supply, each time you physically disconnect a device from the USB cable, and do not use the "unplug" procedure first, you zap your device with a power-surge, unprotected."

If that were an issue, why would only storage devices have a removal procedure?

We manufacture USB peripherals (which don't have a removal procedure), and I plug and unplug them every day. I have never had a USB chip go bad.

Not at all.

In principle, all plugged USB have to unplug through the OS first, especially CMOS chips and devices containing their firmware etched in flash, bubble, or static RAM.

Storage devices however, are more susceptible to data loss via a power surge, and data loss is usually a significant and costly damage.

Look into the package of a disk-on-key (or other storage devices), and see the warning for yourself

Good time of day,Yuval,

I do appreciate all your knoweledges and I do respect all you said here. But i'm afraid I can't agree at this particular case ...to unplug through the OS first, especially CMOS chips and devices containing their firmware etched in flash, bubble, or static RAM...

OS does nothing to protect any static memory stick on physical level unless reload data saved in OS's cache into solid memory stick just before it unplugged. It goes so as contemporary windows drivers are using asynchronous mode of data writing. It's next myth that OS unplugging procedure could make memory stick's life longer and safer. Just recall Win98 first driver for a flash memory. There were no any procedures for flash mems unplugging as there had been used drivers for synchronous writing mode.

Linux OS distros up for recently had nothing like these special unpluging utilities for any USB devices. Just plug and unplug any device and write/read all what you're needing and whenever you wish as linux uses syncronous mode as default for mobile mem devices. Even for SuSE 10.1-10.3 which does have such formal procedure I used to type-in time to time "sync" command in shell and plug/unplug my flash memory with no care of.

My old flash memory works for me over 5 years with no one claim. I plug/unplug one without any additional mouse clicks no matter in which OS.

Hi Yuval,

Good answers but I have formatted several discs and noted that the boot sector was not removed??

Either corrupt or valid Boot-Sector, is created anew and gets a fixed address-range when partitioning, and it's not removed when formatting, only re-written, within that same given boundary (address-range).

When you Defrag your disk on XP for instance, this "untouchable" area is seen in continuous green, and it's fixed in placement, unlike any other type of data written on the disk, which is shifted all the time.

The Defrag display is just a graphic representation for the user, but it portrays a real situation: The Boot-Sector is a fixed area on the physical disk, restricted for access given only to the file-system updates.

The Boot-Sector area doesn't move, like the rest of the data, but you update it each time you format the disk.

Any given file on the disk, may be split into many segments placed on sectors remote from each other, and can only be summoned together by the transcription-map of the File System, which is constantly updated in the Boot-Sector.

This leads over time to fragmentation of files on the disk, and doing so, to reduce disk-head access required for the many different addresses of each file (thus reducing overall file access speed).

This is because when the disk-head writes segments of a file, it rushes each time to the nearest vacant area, not so much caring if it's total volume is continuous or not, in terms of vacant disk area. It's simply to reduce writing time, preferring writing speed over search time for continuous areas.

- You may then use Defrag to integrate those segments back to continuous arrays of data for each file, and in turn, shortening the long list of addresses required for each file in the transcription map, thus increasing files access speed on the disk.

Is it way off-subject ? I tend to drift...

You're tacking well actually, thanks

In the case of a corrupt Boot-Sector, you'll have to re-define partition and format the disk, in order to re-write it's Boot-Sector correctly.

This, of course, means a total data-loss.

In the case of an external disk, you'll have to

1. Disconnect the computer's main disk

2. Re-define the boot-sequence in the BIOS routine, to look for the system in the CD-ROM

3. Boot the computer from the CD-ROM to define Partition and Format the external HDD disk.

4. Stop the procedure before the new Windows system is loaded

5. Restore the older BIOS definitions

6. Start the PC as usual

7. Re-plug the external disk, and re-format it, just for good measure

OR - get it to the store to be re-formatted, if you don't want all that hassle

UNPLUGING icon mostly serves for data synchronization between the PC's cache and storage device. It's unlikely just that reason has caused complete USB HD crashing.

I'm assuming your device is a big set of memory flash chips. As any flash memory it is restricted by number of writing cycles(from 5000 up to 1 mln or so). Viruses directed to such flash devices might produce hundreds attempts to write only one byte to crucial address and it makes memory broken or at least only readable.

It could be some easer case when there were only installed flag protecting chip from read/write. All will be well since it'll be dropped.

If your attempts of reformatting under Windows hadn't succeeded, try out Knoppix live CD. I have recovered out up to 70% of a broken flash devices brought by my friends for curing. If you're not experienced in Linux find some one at yours whereabouts who could lend you a hand.

Good luck.

It does seem unlikely that the unplugging would cause the complete HD crash. Does the manufacturer not have a provision to handle an unexpected power loss?

True, if the HDD was idle when it's power was cut, since most HDDs these days, have a lightning-fast head-parking system for that.

But if the device was busy writing at the time of disconnection, it would almost definitely corrupt the boot-sector (not being able to complete registration of the file's location addresses and type), and render the whole disk unreadable

The external drive in question is a Western Digital passport type. This is a laptop type hard drive with 60GB of capacity and only required 5v power supply rather than both 5V and 12V. For the passport line a USB interface board is added to the drive and a comm cable runs to the USB port on the computer.

Western Digital does provide a program which is supposed to reformat these drive. BUT . . being a legacy product' they no longer provide support or explanations of how to use it. They want to charge for any tech support. Plus they want to be paid by credit card via the internet. I do not have a credit card. I pay cash and live within my means.

A local computer shop tells me the shop charge for recovering the drive will exceed the cost to buy a replacement. It was their tech who told me about the reformat program. He said it can be done but was tricky and did not elaborate on details.

In short everyone is telling me they don't want to repair things, they want me to give them more money for a new one. Money I do not have.

So I was mistaken as you have that an old real HD drive. I thought you had such a solid memory device which used to be so popular today.

Ok. There could be two options:

First (worst). Time has come for your drive alongside with any one mechanical device. For mobile devices this time is believed to be significantly shorter to come. By the way I had lost some of my data due to disk controller crash. I could save my data but I have not by now my lovely linux on broken desktop.

Second. You have a hope to use utilities for your drive recovering if the device is at least recognized by BIOS. Try out this. It's Partition Magic prog's restricted free version. I do not aware of how much it restricted and and how it handles mobile USB devices. But for common HDs it helped me significantly in the past.

Good luck again.

Search the net for "MBR recovery tools", you will find some free softwares, maybe those can help, at least it's worth a try...

Hi elnav,

I used this program last year, it was a down load I got from majorgeeks.com I think. It wasn't tricky at all no more than a paint by # set and it was free

Keep looking and beware of the gill net marauder's

This is an actual spinning hard drive such as is used in a lap top. Not a chip.

I have a Knoppix live D but was not able to figure out how to use it.

I am still a beginner when it comes to Linux.

Run console then type in "su" then "enter" then "mc" (midnight commander) it's shell command line prog for linux. You could try out commands "fdisk", "cdisk" or "fsck" if you have real experience as linuxoid. I'm afraid you'll be some uncomfortable or even scared to use these command line scripts and read a lot of manuals. At least you being under knoppix could have a look over desktop to find out is there your drive. If it's there (it will be some /sda1,2,3 /sdb1,2,3 etc). If so make right-click over it and look up what will be suggested by context menu.

Please! where do I find a glossary to explain all the vernacular used by linuxoids? Things like Console, SU, MC, fdisk, cdisk, fsck, etc. I figured out "desktop" but /sda1,2,3 /sdb1,2,3 etc. is just so much alpha numeric gibberish. I assume fdisk is the same as from old DOS Ver 3.2

I realize each cult has its own secret code language, but usually when a cult want to recruit willing members they make it easier to learn the language. So far I only find confusion. I speak english and a smattering of european languages but I don't speak geek! Ubuntu Help hasn't been helpful.

I have a Knoppix CD but can't open it.

Fdisk is not the same here. FSCK is a very powerful low level script, but it would be dangerous to use one by novice.

It took a lot for me to be learned use this stuff. I had a good luck to have a good friend of mine which is a really linux guru. Ok, do nothing if you're not sure. Nevertheless you could safely make right-clilck over one by one sda#, hda# device and click then option "mount". After mounting of each device you could watch a content of disks for finding out whether is there your problem USB hard drive. Write down names of disks in linux notation for working with only your USB HD. Once you identified it you could unmount rest of HDs to secure further safety work.

Supposedly and likely Ubuntu has graphic interface to handle drive(I am not user of Ubu). I think knoppix has too. Try to find it out. I said you, now I'm working under damn WinXP and all what I told you is what I could get from my memory.

Btw have you downloaded Magic Partition? I'd recollected the full version works with USB HD. I have no any ideas of demo version though.

Caramba wrote: Nevertheless you could safely make right-click over one by one sda#, hda# device and click then option "mount"

REPLY

Please explain sda# and hda# .

In Ubuntu under Places - Computers - File System; I see a folder with an X and when I click on it I get a message saying I do not have permission to read. As the only user of this computer I have administrative priviledge so this may in fact be the flawed folder. It doesn't show up as a drive the way a USB thumb drive does.

I will try to locate Magic Partition. Is that a linux program or for Windows XP?

During the last year, I have learnt to appreciate Haajee's advice. That too is an option. Not all anti-virus are fully debugged, and trouble free.

If you feel you're not fluent in geekish, then ask a willing and informed friend, to check-disk and retrieve lost data on their computer, and if this fails, re-define and format it, at least for further use of the device.

Do not however, exclude the possibility, that it simply croaked, due to an accidental shock or other forms of unfortunate misuse. Spinning HDD is a very sesitive piece of equipment, and untill we have cheap enough flash disks (also called "Silicone-Disk"), were bound to use delicate mechanical medium for massive data storage.

Yuval wrote: If you feel you're not fluent in geekish, then ask a willing and informed friend, to check-disk and retrieve lost data on their computer, and if this fails, re-define and format it, at least for further use of the device.

REPLY

Therein lies the problem! I live in a remote area and the nearest friend who knows more about computers than I do is 600 miles away. The nearest town is an hour's drive away. My friend quit using windows because of all the problems inherent with that product. In fact he shipped his own computer to me by bus parcel post so that I could get back online. Being without work ( no computer) for several months nearly bankrupted me and I had no money with which to buy even a good used computer.

The USB drive was working perfectly unil scanned by AVG and now I can stlil hear it clicking softly as it tried to scan for recognized data sectors. The computer store in town charges three times as much per hour as I can earn. And right now I have no work. So I have to fix the problem on my own. With Windows I know how to use Chkdsk and fDisk but not in Linux. It appears the boot sector got clobbered. And if the disk does in fact have the infection that destroyed my other computer drive, I am reluctant to risk it. Hence my desire to use Linux. I have already spent far too much time struggling to fix my computers and must now try and do something productive to earn any money; or we lose our home.

Let me re-iterate:

1. If there is valuable data on the corrupt disk which you absolutely need, you will have no choice but to let some specialist retrieve it for you with custom-made software.

2. If the data there is something you can somehow do without, then have no fear of contamination or infection, and go ahead to and re-define it and format it as described in my post above, since as instructed above, there is no live operating system to be infected, only that on the Operating System Setup program (written in ROM) to define and format the disk. ROM data, cannot be infected by a virus or a bug, because it cannot be re-written, only read from.

That's all there is to it. The rest is yours to decide, according to your priorities.

Yuval, I started by saying I wanted to reformat it but the computer cannot see the drive.

This external drive is one of two backup drives both of which contain the same data. The question was and remains; how do I force the issue so the computer recognize that there is a drive connected. The reformatting software from the drive manufacturer failed to work.

It was a second comment that "IF" I could recover the data it would be nice, because then I would not have to worry about recovering the second back up. Right now both are unreadable, probably due to the same virus.

The working operating system cannot see (recognize) the disk unless it has a valid boot sector, from which you are allowed to re-format.

To be able to re-format the disk you have to mount the boot-sector on it first. This is done by defining valid (at least one, or possibly more) partitions on the disk. Only then it become recognizable by a proper (compatible) operating system.

I for one, never define just one partition on a disk, but two at least. Say, the system and applications are installed on drive C:\, the valuable data, important work-files and such on drive D:\ and so on.

Why?

If a virus kills my system on C:\ I still have all my valuable data intact, on D:\ ready to be salvaged.

You can also (as a caution for future mishaps), prepare a "ghost" or "mirror" system-image, to be promptly mounted in a case such as yours.

There are many ways to prevent future mishaps, so, go ahead and define your disk anew, then re-format it. I understand there is no data there, which you cannot do without.

Yes I realize that but how do you tell the computer to make a partition on a drive which is not even seen or recognized. When i plug in the USB cable the computer says an unknown USB device is present but nothing shows up. At least with the BIOS there is an automatic detection scheme that shows cylinders and sectors. The USB does not show up in the BIOS menu auto check.

Partitioning a drive requires me to designate it. Can't do that when no icon or name or number is evident in any way or form. I do not want to screw up the C:\ drive from which I am running the formatting fdisk And what the heck is to "mount"? I know how to mount and horse and I hesitate to use the term with reference to my wife and I can mount a spare wheel on my truck but: . . a drive? What hardware do I mount the boot with?

All this geek jargon has me confused. But then nothing can be worse than having to click START to STOP a windows computer. Good thing cars are not designed that way.

"...how do you tell the computer to make a partition on a drive which is not even seen or recognized..." - For that we'll either need an Operating System Setup program, or alternatively, A technician utilities disk. There, you might have several utilities to do the job, easily and properly.

If you don't have such a disk, write to me on the mail system, where we can discuss how this can be obtained, since this is a public forum, not very suitable for such chatter.

"...Partitioning a drive requires me to designate it..." - Drive-letter Designation only occures after proper partitioning, not before. Once yoyr disk is partitioned, designation occure, and it's ready for the Format routine.

"...I do not want to screw up the C:\ drive from which I am running the formatting fdisk And what the heck is to "mount"? ..." - As I detailed in my post above, you disconnect your main, still working Hard-Disk from the system, and mount the faulty drive as the new designated main drive, for system installation, which is why you need to re-direct the boot-sequence on your BIOS.

"Mounting" a drive (here) is equivalent to "Partitioning".

For your info please.

Regards

Another news on the subject:

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2334709,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

AVG Offers Free Subscription for Deleting Key File

Security vendor AVG said Thursday that the company will offer a free year of service, after its antivirus software misidentified a key Windows system file as malware.

Earlier this week, AVG identified user32.dll as a generic Trojan, offering to delete it.

Those that did risked putting their PC into an endless reboot cycle.

AVG later apologized and offered workarounds for affected users.

Thursday, the company went one further. "As a follow-up to the rapid distribution of recovery instructions and repair CDs, AVG Technologies is offering all affected users a free license or license extension as follows," AVG said in a statement.

Essentially, the offer covers a free year of AVG 8.0 service, or a free upgrade for AVG 7.5 users.

The upgrade also includes users of the free AVG antivirus service.

Not all customers will receive the license, just "affected users," AVG said.

The company said it will contact affected customers beginning Nov. 24, and advise them of how to obtain the free year of service.

AVG also apologized again for its error. "AVG Technologies apologizes again for the inconvenience caused to our customers and wishes to assure our users worldwide that the company is actively putting new processes in place to avoid similar occurrences in the future," it said.

I'm was getting an error message regarding a file which I subsequently identified as being part of my HP printer files. Infortunately I blocked it and now have to figure out how to unblock it. Reason for a problem is that as a result of this and a few other discussions I am now running multiple anti virus programs. They seem to co-habit and do not conflict but I must first identify which program is responsible for saying the file is a virus. So far AVG appears to be the culprit. I am away from home at this time, so resolution will have to await my return.

Unfortunately I blocked it and now have to figure out how to unblock it.

How did you block it, what was used to accomplish the blocking action?

bwire asked : "how did you block it?"

REPLY

A message popped up saying so and such was trying to get active and it looks like a virus. Th eprogram asked if it should block it so I said yes.

Okay that helps.

Friend o'mine uses AVG an the program offers to "heal" Trojans?? They don't heal, they need be deleted.

So I wondered of your circumstance too.

My understanding of how AVG and other anti virus programs work is that they quarantine suspected virus program files.That is in case you mis identified the wrong file. But when a virus infects a legitimate file by imbedding code strings within the legitimate code; the "healing" consist of deleting the string or malignant code and repairing the legitimate and useful code. Total deletion would leave the operating system deficient and unable to work. This where I made a mistake. I manually deleted what I figured was virus files. Perhaps its an unfortunate marketing term they use in order to make the process seem familiar and reassuring to non technical people. Eradication and reconstructing doesn't sound especially friendly does it? Healing sounds better.

I have had good results with Norton and AVG in the past. However, this latest trojan or malware seemed specifically designed to sidestep and later to overcome these popular protection programs. Gues it was inevitable. Good programs become known as to how they protect. It is only time before someone figures out how to defeat the protection. I'm not a programmer. Neither am i a mechanic. But I can tesr down and rebuild engines. I sort of know something about program analysis from my past careers managing systems and factories.

Thanks. This is good to know, since AVG is very popular, and many people trust it, blindfolded.

Hello Haajee,

How are ya.

I use an Internet security suite and pay the protection $ yearly because I've never experienced any disruptive events when using it.

I have for nonsensical reasons deviated and tried other programs including AVG a few times and paid for it with hours of frustration BIOS and HD replacements.

I'll stick with old faithful and run it solo...

You should assign your DVD as boot device and start downloading process with knoppix inside your DVD drive. Just wait till the system will be downloaded. It'll be ended up with graphic interface (KDE,Gnome) which looks like windows' one in some ways.

Regards!

I m also the fan of AVG AV, but after false messges & locking / deleting a lot f files, I haveread an artcle:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-10093875-83.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

AVG update cripples some Windows XP systems

AVG update cripples some Windows XP systems

On Tuesday an update for AVG 8 <http://www.download.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10891365.html> suggested that a Windows system file is a Trojan horse, and users who delete the file form the system could leave their Windows XP systems endlessly rebooting or unable to reboot at all. The problem only affects users of AVG 8 products running the Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish language versions of Windows XP. AVG immediately sent out a corrected update to its customers, including those using the free editions of AVG.

A representative for AVG said, "AVG is actively working to remedy the problem some users are experiencing related to the most recent update to commercial and free versions of AVG 7.5 and AVG 8.0 in some languages. A number of users who installed the update mistakenly received a warning that the Windows system file user32.dll product version 5.1.2600.3099 was infected with a Trojan virus and were prompted to delete a file essential to the operation of Windows XP."

In response, the Czech antivirus company has posted details and a fix tool on its site.

For users unable to use their Windows XP machines, AVG says they "should contact their AVG reseller or ask a friend to download the information and fix tool for them."

AVG has suffered some embarrassing glitches of late. Last month, an AVG update declared some ZoneAlarm firewall files to be part of a Trojan horse. In July AVG had to reconfigure its Linkscanner tool </8301-10789_3-9986453-57.html> after various Web sites complained about the increased traffic as a result of the tool's proactive scanning for malware.

My entry in te blog is :

AVG giving trouble to almost all SWs from NirSoft& a lot more SW.

Blocking every program.

It has lost my lot of downloads from reliable Sites

Thanks Haajee! I think I got one of the AVG bugs.And I was using AVG ver 8.0 It has identified my HP printer driver as a trojan and removed it. Now I can't print. At least now I know why. I will have to block AVG and reinstall my HP drivers to get that working.

the answer is a program called photorec you can download it for free, and diskrecovery or testdisk -- http://www.cgsecurity.org you can retrive your files and redo your disk. you can download a boatable disk and then work with your disk - if you have problems contact the programer - he does answer and the software is free. Good luck

Hi,

Have you tried plugging to another box? Your computer could be infected with the virus.

See if the hard drive still shows when you plug it, you will need a hard disk recovery software to recover the contents. or just format it straight.

Another possibility to try is a program called Partition Table Doctor - from www.ptdd.com - I had an HD crash on me about two years ago and all the usual suspects were not able to recover - Norton, etc etc. I downloaded PTD and tried it out and it worked just fine - recovered about 98% of a drive who's boot record and partition table had been corrupted. What I found great about the product was that you could download it, run it, see if it would work, and if so, buy it to 'unlock' the fixing process. The free scan showed me that it would recover my files, so I paid the money and it worked just fine. It also allows you to do MBR and FAT snapshots.

Highly recommended, at least its worth a try - all you need is the ability to boot to an OS first, and then hopefully PTD will see any attached devices, even if they don't have a good boot or FAT table.

Good luck!

Elnav,

Please consider the possibility that the drive may have gone bad. From the description of the problem, I think that is a possible problem. If the drive was going bad, AVG would have a hard time reading it, thus it hung up. Your later post talking about the drive making a "seeking" noise is another clue that you might have a bad drive, not just a software/drive access issue.

The way I would handle this would be to mount the drive as a "slave" in a desktop computer, taking the USB interface out of the picture. There are cheap adapters out there available to allow you to hook up a laptop-size drive to a desktop IDE port. If the drive is still not seen by the desktop BIOS, I would say the drive is bad for sure.

Since you are not a tech-type, what about sending to a friend who is? I would be happy to assist, but I doubt you would be willing to trust an absolute stranger , a very trustworthy stranger, but a stranger none the less.

If you decide to send to a tech-friend, you can pull the drive out of the enclosure to make it cheaper to ship. Make sure the "friend" you send it to has a way to hook up that size of drive without having to use a USB interface. Good luck!

Tom

I had the same thing happen to my Seagate external drive. I took it apart and plugged the drive into my EIDE cable on a desktop PC using an adapter board accuired from Fry's electronics that allows a laptop drive to plug into a desktop cable. I then used "fdisk/mbr" from an old DOS boot disk to correct my boot sector problem which revived the drive and saved my data.

Good luck

Makes sense, but fdisk by DOS (v.6 and up for instance) limits the partition size to 2GB, and here we're talking about a modern HDD with what? 60 GB ? to mount such volume disk anew, you'll either need a setup program for win 2000 (up to 128 GB) or higher.

The drive in question is an 80GB Western Digital. So win 2000 it is. Thanks!

Regards

External USB drive is fitted in an enclosure & has lectronics-PCB to work as USB sysem as it is on-board [Motherboard].

If you can open it put the Had-Drive as inernal-drie as a slave to master; it will function as PATA or SATA [, it is ]Internal drive. And you can be assured about the condition of drive

Boot & see if Setup recognises.

Regards

Or it may confuse the computer because, two boot sectors and one is corrupted

I think Haajee's suggestion was to be able to check for the corrupt disk integrity, by the system on the good (Master) disk. You can run checkdisk and defrag of a slave from a master on the IDE cable, or alternatively, run checkdisk and defrag of a 'device-1' from a 'device-0' on a SATA cable.

This is just to see the corrupt disk condition, to assess if it needs re-partitioning and format which means loss of all data, or in a better scenario, just an integrity fix and defrag - in order to retrieve existing data.

Regards

Mr. bwire

I said " Boot & see if Setup recognises."

I have not gone beyond Access of Setup [BIOS] where the OK-drives are listed Boot or non-boot.

If we go beyond BIOS & let the system boot all the drives shown in BIOS are accesible

after boot also.

AND MORE IMPORTANT FACT IS:

System will boot from PRIMARY_MASTER normally if BOOT-Order is set normal; ie

1st boot Drive 0 [zero] { Different BIOS have different wordings but meaning the same}

Boot Order set in BIOS will decide from which Storage-device to boot.

I have 2 ATA, 1 SATA & 2 CD/DVD Drives in my system; all HDDs are system-drives.

System will not boot from a Drive which does not have system on it; although the BIOS

is set to boot from that none-system drive.

I hope that you may had a chance; CD-Drive set to be boot from; has a CD in; but either

a non-system CD or a faulty-system-CD; your system will try to search the system a while

& boot from the next Boot-drive in Queue.

Note: in Windows-XP

Guest-Hard-drive*** cannot be used as Boot-Drive but can be connected in system.

*** [installed on other system Mother-Boards ]

I think we can connect 4 ATA HDD; SATA as many as PORTs available on Mother-board; All having "Active" partition.

any comments are welcome !!!

Regards

elnav,

I just got a tip check it out

Hard disk drive regenerator

www.salvagedata.com Free ISO certified