I don't seem to have much luck with USB flash drives, which is a shame given their convenience.  Every flash drive I have ever possessed seems to start to misbehave within weeks, mostly just not being recognised by the PC.

Reformatting the drive would seem to be the answer, but the format usually fails with one cryptic message or another.

Today I had the usual kind of problem with a 1Gb Dane-Elec flash drive (this is not to single out Dane-Elec, it's just one of a procession of dead devices) but I decided to try a format from the command prompt.  Given my background, I don't understand why I haven't tried this before!

Format e: failed with 'Cannot determine the file system of drive E:'

'Aha!' I thought, 'I should be specifying the file system!'

Format e: /FS:FAT just chugged to a halt with no result.

'OK' I thought, 'time to run format /? and read the help text!'

Format e: /X /FS:FAT started well (the /X switch unmounts the drive) but failed with 'Error in IOCTL call'. 

'Right', I thought, 'if it isn't FAT, and it certainly isn't NTFS, maybe the file system should be FAT32!'

Format e: /X /FS:FAT32 started well ..... and didn't fall over.

Except for the fact that formatting a 1Gb flash disk took over 2 hours (!) I now have a functioning USB drive again.

So, write this on a piece of paper and glue it to the wall:  Format [drive letter]: /X /FS:FAT32

All you need after that is patience ....

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