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I just got a new flash drive (Corsair Flash Voyager 32GB). I tried to install live Chromium OS on it but I messed something up and decided to reformat it. The formatter froze and I canceled it. Now neither my Windows 7 Dell nor my Apple OS X Lion can recognize my flash drive when I plug it in (it does not show up anywhere). How can I force it to show up so I can reformat it?

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  • Try using a Gparted Live CD
    – VBwhatnow
    Jun 29, 2012 at 7:32
  • May be the format froze because the USB stick went defect?
    – Robert
    Jun 29, 2012 at 8:38

3 Answers 3

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I got a usb flash drive which was unrecognized by my pc. I followed following steps to make it recognized.

  1. Right click on Computer icon in desktop.
  2. Go for manage
  3. In that option use disk management. You can see available disk in your pc. Your flash drive is seen in that as "disk 1" (note disk 0 is your primary harddrive)
  4. Change the drive letter if possible.
  5. If you cant right click and use "delete drive" option.
  6. Then you can see that Drive as "UNALLOTED"
  7. Right click on it and go for "New simple Volume"
  8. Follow the wizard as it instructed. It requires formatting.
  9. Now it is your Flash Drive Flashing on your desktop.

Enjoy. All the best.

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You can try to use DISKPART utility in Windows 7.

When you enter that utility, first write LIST DISK. That will give you list of all recognized drives including USB. Remember number (e.g. 9). Than you can execute

SELECT DISK 9
CLEAN
CREATE PARTITION PRIMARY
FORMAT FS=FAT32 QUICK

That should give you clean slate.

P.S. Do be careful to select correct disk number. If you select wrong number, you will format wrong disk.

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  • Just tried list disk, only my hard drive shows up.
    – Matt
    Jun 29, 2012 at 7:40
  • 1
    That usually means that something has gone on hardware level. Jun 30, 2012 at 1:57
  • Thank you so much, friend, it really worked! I have a corrupted San Cruzer 8GB USB. I could not format it with diskmgmt.msc (it displayed the disk with RAW fs type, but formatting attempts failed with "file not found" or smth like that). I must remember this tool, it is very powerful! Jan 5, 2022 at 22:35
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Return it and get a new one. Works every time.

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