Solved How Can I Re-Format A Memory Stick?

[ColMac]

I installed and formatted a Maxell 32 GB USB memory stick in my Dell computer which has a Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit operating system. Saved many photos on it, and then removed it. Today I re-inserted it, and the computer wouldn't read it: it advised I must format the stick before it could be used. Knowing full well I was about to wipe the thing clean, I did a "Format" operation, and it is now re-formatted to 1 MB.

Any ideas about how I can restore the thing to 32 GB capacity?

 

[Hipster Doofus]

SD Card Formatter should do it. Just used it myself. Download link is on the left side of the page.

 

[whs]

For storing data, I would format it to Fat32, not NTFS.

 

[ColMac]

No Joy

I previously formatted the stick to FAT32.

Downloaded, installed, and ran the SD Card Formatter.

The stick is still set to 1 MB.

Thank you both for trying to help!

 

[whs]

Post a picturre of Disk Management where your stick shows. That may help us to better understand what is going on.

 

[ColMac]

How Can I Re-Format Stick Memory

The stick memory (officially, I suppose it's a USB flash memory card) is the F Drive on the attached screen shot.

 

[Hipster Doofus]

Don't know why that program didn't work. I used it fives minutes before posting about it & it got my stick back to normal.

Anyway see how this goes. You could use the 'clean all' option. That should get it back to new.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/52129-disk-clean-clean-all-diskpart-command.html

 

[Lantz]

Did you trying going into computer, left clicking the card, hitting format in the pop-up menu, then hitting the 'Restore Device Defaults' button?

 

[whs]

The stick memory (officially, I suppose it's a USB flash memory card) is the F Drive on the attached screen shot.

Can you make the screenshot such that the stick also shows in the lower pane.

 

[ColMac]

How Can I Re-Format. . .

First of all, thanks to all of you for your advice and suggestions.

I believe I have a hardware failure.

In addition to trying to follow your advisories, I have downloaded, installed, and launched tools available online at:

http://download.cnet.com/HP-USB-Disk-Storage-Format-Tool/3000-2094_4-10974082.html and also at:


http://www.flashmemorytoolkit.com/

Although Windows recognizes the drive, the HP tool does not. The flash memory tool kit re-formats it to 1 MB (again).

So I give up, and will return the drive to the retailer, hoping for a credit or exchange.

Again, thanks for trying to help.

 

[TheDirtyBomb]

Did you try a new partition on the memory stick, sometimes that works.