Funky USB stick problem?

[Logistics]

So my Paps bought a 4-pack of Kingston DataTraveler 2.0's, years ago; 4GB ones. He finally busted out the fourth one the other day and the thing won't work.

When he opens it it shows a blank page, when you Properties it it shows 0 used and 0 available. When you go to Format it, nothing ever comes up. I can use MBR to see it as well, but it says there's 0 space, no MBR, no partitions. HDD LLF can't even see it, and I have the version that can do USB drives, I've done it to my 1 of those 4 sticks and recovered some bad spots.

It just acts like it has literal hardware problems; internal component failure. Never seen this happen before.

Any ideas?

-Jay

[Pentium4]

Re: Funky USB stick problem?

That's strange....Maybe for some weird reason the disk needs to be initialized in Disk Management?

[Logistics]

Re: Funky USB stick problem?

Disk Management sees it, but just lists it as 0 space and you can't do anything with it, can't right click on it, can't perform any actions on it. So weird.

[japlytic]

Re: Funky USB stick problem?

With memory cards and USB drives, there are a number of fakes going around - could that be the problem?

[lti]

Re: Funky USB stick problem?

It just acts like it has literal hardware problems; internal component failure. Never seen this happen before.

Maybe it does.

[Gariarto]

Re: Funky USB stick problem?

If every other flash drive works fine in the PC you're trying it in, then its reasonably safe to assume the problematic one is defective. Iti may be correct in saying its DOA.
One thing you could do if you want to persue it, is contact Kingston and ask them for any specific software recovery tools they might share with you. I'm a Patriot man myself for preference, they have such things on request to attempt to revive problematic flash drives. Worth asking. For what a 4gb thumb drive is to them they may well just give you another !

@ japlytic. A fake one in a pack of 4 ?