"The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable."

(I love this forum).

Hey guys, I'm having a bit of problems with my USB thumb-drive. Whenever I try to format it (via Windows) it says "The disk is write protected." and on accessing, it gives the following error,

"The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable".

I decided to look-up on internet to get this solved but didn't find any solution.

It shows up under Disk Management as "RAW". There is no data in the drive (even if it is some, it's not worthy). Any fixes?

I'm using Windows 7 32-bit. I tried a lot of stuff but failed to get this up and running.

Any help?

I assume it isn't a really old USB with a write protect switch?

mjf said:

I assume it isn't a really old USB with a write protect switch?

Your statement is invalid. I bought it a few weeks ago, what I did (I guess) pulled it off the port while in use. (stupidity)

Try using the Clean All command, after that format and partition.

Disk - Clean and Clean All with Diskpart Command

r4fay said:

mjf said:

I assume it isn't a really old USB with a write protect switch?

Your statement is invalid. I bought it a few weeks ago, what I did (I guess) pulled it off the port while in use. (stupidity)

I would have said assumption incorrect.
The full setup for a USB flash drive if you haven't physically damaged it is:

Elevated command prompt
>diskpart
>list disk
>select disk n
..........where n is the number relating to the flash drive
>list disk
.............check the asterisk is indeed next to the flash drive (not your HDD!!)
>clean
>create partition primary
>select partition 1
...........should already be selected
>format fs=fat32 quick
>assign
......... allows windows to assign the next available letter each time it's plugged in.
>exit

If this doesn't work you can try replacing clean, quick format with
>clean all
>format fs=fat32
just takes longer

If your flash drive doesn't appear in windows explorer then I'd say it's probably dead.

@MY5T: Already tried that, no luck.
@mjf: Hello, I encountered (actually DISKPART did) problem at CLEAN command.

Code:

Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7600
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: RAFAY-PC

DISKPART> LIST DISK

  Disk ###  Status         Size     Free     Dyn  Gpt
  --------  -------------  -------  -------  ---  ---
  Disk 0    Online          465 GB  1024 KB   *
  Disk 1    Online           14 GB      0 B

DISKPART> SELECT DISK 1

Disk 1 is now the selected disk.

DISKPART> CLEAN

DiskPart has encountered an error: The media is write protected.
See the System Event Log for more information.

DISKPART>

I looked up at Event Viewer and found this on the top of all entries of "System Logs".

The Volume Shadow Copy service entered the stopped state.

Try this.

http://www.apacer.com/en/support/dow...r_v2.9.1.1.zip

Bill2 said:

Try this.

http://www.apacer.com/en/support/dow...r_v2.9.1.1.zip

It says "USB Flash Disk not found!" while it's plugged in there.