Killed thumb drive?

Yesterday I bought a new SanDisk 32 GB USB Flash Drive to experiment with.

Messed around with it (as DH6) in Media Toolbox, hoping for one thing to find a way to get rid of all the software that came in it. At one point I was warned that if I went ahead with what I was doing I would lose all the data on the drive. Well, that was sort of what I wanted, and I assumed that I would be able to replace anything I wanted.

Oops! It is no longer recognized as something that can be read and written. When I plug it in, I get the usual little window about a "USB Attachment," and it recognizes that the vendor is SanDisk, but no icon on Workbench, no listing under Drives.

I suppose that means I have turned it permanently into a piece of junk, but the fact that USB Inspector shows it as follows, and usb.log acknowledges it (see further below) as "successfully added" and "initialized" makes me think that maybe there is some hope for recovering its proper functionality:

(Functionality)
Type:Interface
Product:Ultra
Vendor:SanDisk
Serial no.:2004[etc.]
Version:1.26
Class:Mass Storage
Subclass:6
Driver:MassStorage Device Task

(usb.log)
09:58:31 - hub.usbfd
HUB
Device found on port 4 of hub "".
09:58:31 - hub.usbfd
Hub port
Device at port 4 of hub "" is high-speed.
09:58:31 - USB stack
New Fkt
Fkt 0x503bb7a0 at level 2
09:58:31 - hub.usbfd
HUB
Device on hub port 4 successfully added.
09:58:31 - USB Fkt Init
Init Fkt Fkt 0x503bb7a0 is {Vendor: 0x0781, Product: 0x556C, Class: 00.00}
09:58:31 - USB Fkt Init
Init Fkt
Fkt 0x503bb7a0 initialized

Any ideas? Or should I just chuck it?

Use gparted on a Linux system to re-partition it. That usually works for me. You may have to re-create a MS-DOS partition table first before you're allowed to create a new partition and format it though.

you can also run media toolbox again and partition the drive like a harddisk.
dont forget the filesystem etc.

should work i did it a few times now and back for windows stuff with gparted or something like that on linux or mac or windhoze

If you have access to a windows machine, search for HPUSBFW.EXE
It has "repaired" every trashed thumb drive I have had so far.

Warning: The contents of the drive will be lost.

p.s. That's a web search, as in googley or something.

Quote:
Thanks, guys.

I haven't had a Linux system since my A1 died. Part of my wild idea for this USB drive was to see if maybe I could install Linux on it somehow.

Running Media Toolbox didn't work--first thing I tried, of course--because Media Toolbox didn't recognize the drive and list it under "Select device."

It happens I do have access to a (ugh!) windows machine, so I booted it up, wondering how to find HPUSBFW.EXE. Would it be on the computer, or would I have to download it from the internet?

Turned out, no need! The laptop recognized the drive and offered to fix it for me. I accepted, and later reformatted it on my SAM460.

Back to experimenting (a little more carefully). I wonder where I can find documentation for Media Toolbox; there's nothing in System:Documentation about it on this machine.

Anyway, thanks again!