Damage to flash drive when you cancel formatting

[D143n]

I used a super talent 4gb switch blade for this . When formatting , I unclicked the quick format option. It took 11 mins and was still not done formatting. I canceled the format and my usb is unreadable now.

[pbatard]

Your USB is not unreadable. It's just unpartitioned and you need to enable the option that lists unpartitioned drives in Rufus. Please see here.

[D143n]

Your solution will only work if the usb is detectable.My usb after canceling the formatting also damaged what the usb is detected as.My usb is now detected as WPD Filesystem Volume Driver.With a" This device cannot start. (Code 10)"

[pbatard]

Then I am wondering if it's a hardware issue. All Rufus does, really, when partitioning is tell Windows to write blocks of data. Nothing more. And during a non quick format, the formatting process (which is a Windows process - Rufus is just asking Windows to start a format operation) will write blocks of empty data.

When a user clicks cancel in Rufus, Rufus simply asks the formatting operation to stop, using the exact same command as if you started formatting from the commandline, and asked it to stop. Especially, Rufus does not kill the formatting process before Windows indicates that it has received the cancel command and processed it.

Therefore, if your drive is no longer properly detected, I don't think it has anything to do with Rufus, and I'm pretty sure the exact same issue would have happened in you were using the format command from a command prompt, and cancelled it.

A lot of people tend to think that, because data is getting erased, partitioning or formatting a drive is some kind dangerous operation, but it really isn't. All that happens really is the OS telling the drive to write some blocks of data and, contrary to what people expect, none of these blocks are more important than others. Even if you cancel right in the middle of such an operation, the drive will not just "magically" be rendered inoperable. That's because the internal USB controller from the drive is also set to work with blocks, and couldn't care less if the data on the blocks that were formatted is blank or completely random. Especially, the USB controller from the drive does not need any of the data from any of the blocks that are written during a format or partitioning operation to allow the OS to access it. What's more. none of the formatting tools will do anything special with regards to the driver, so if a driver fails after a formatting or partitioning operation, then it looks like there's something wrong with the hardware, because that should never happen.

Also see issue #132 as well as this FAQ entry.

Are you using an extension cable to plug your device? Have you tried plugging it on a different port?

By the way, I have cancelled many formatting operations while developing Rufus, and plenty of other users have, so if there was an issue with the application that rendered drives inoperable, it would be fairly obvious.

[D143n]

same result for every port

[pbatard]

Please have a look at issue #132. Try to uninstall the driver in device manager and replug the device (driver should be reinstalled). Check your antivirus. Try from another computer or from another OS.

At this stage, either your drive encountered a hardware defect (which may explain why it was taking so long), or something happened on the OS that screwed the default driver. You should easily be able to tell if it's a hardware or OS issue by plugging your drive on a different computer.

[pbatard]

Since there hasn't been any updates in 2 weeks, I'm going to close this issue.

[D143n]

Actually , I managed to fix the flash drive with a windows xp I borrowed. I reformatted the drive and had to use system restore on my windows 7

[fachrim]

Excuse me bro I Got the same prob with u Exactly same How did you do that to fix it bro ...??? Pleaseee help me

[D143n]

never got it fixed. I just gave up.

[Tmp341]

Try HP Usb Disk Storage Format Tool.If that won't work, then try your flash drive's low level format tool.

[bcadams04]

It's now 2018, but since the topic is still relevant (I just finished resolving this issue with my Lexar 32GB USB 3.0 drive), I will add the verified solution that worked for me, to help give direction to all the solutions and speculation offered. I can't verify that my drive's issues stemmed from using it with Rufus, but I did use Rufus (v1.17?) with the drive within the past week during an install - probably the last time the drive was used before exhibiting symptoms mentioned in this and other similar threads. From my recollection, however, the bootable USB creation process completed without error in Rufus, and the subsequent install (Windows) went smoothly also. The symptoms on my device did not appear until the next time I plugged the drive in at home, multiple days later (though within 1 week).

The more useful guidance I can provide is that... Yes, I was able to solve the issue without jumping through many hoops at all. After trying a number of previous suggestions, the first method that worked for me began with Tmp341's suggestion to perform a low-level format on the flash drive. The software I used was HDD Low Level Format Tool 4.40 (HDDGuru.com), and it was the first utility to even recognize the full drive capacity in its unhealthy state. None of the utilities in Windows 7 Pro 64-bit (GUI and command-line, run with admin privileges) could make any headway. Admittedly, I didn't try more than 1 or 2 other 3rd party utilities before attempting the low-level format. Anyways, the format proceeded smoothly and reasonably quickly, without any error messages, and upon completion, I followed the utility's suggestion to create a new partition - using 3rd party software (EaseUS Partition Master 11.9 Free Edition for Home Users), instead of Windows Disk Management. When creating a new partition in EaseUS PM, I used the default setting to span the partition over the full capacity of the drive, formatted as FAT32, and made it a Primary instead of Logical partition. Everything went smoothly here, too, and seconds after applying the actions in the software, the drive reappeared finally, with proper capacity and attributes, in Windows Explorer. This is the combination of steps/tools/settings that worked for me, though it's likely that other tools used to complete the same steps would work as well, and possibly different settings too.

[pbatard]

I can't verify that my drive's issues stemmed from using it with Rufus

From your report, I think we can logically deduce that they didn't:

1. You were able to create the drive successfully without error in Rufus, which means that no write issues were detected.
2. You were able to install Windows using the drive that was created by Rufus, which pretty much means that the Windows installation process was able to successfully read all the data that was written to your drive by Rufus without issue either.

Therefore, we can conclude that, by the time you were finished using your drive, it was in perfect working condition and that whatever happened later on had nothing to do with having used Rufus. Especially, software does not have the capability write what can only be described as a "time bomb" on a USB Flash Drive...

The symptoms on my device did not appear until the next time I plugged the drive in at home, multiple days later (though within 1 week).

This seems to further confirm that what you experienced was a standard hardware failure, that would have happened regardless of the software being used. I think it is my duty to point that out, considering that there appear to be a lot of very vociferous people out there who, while experiencing exactly the level of failure one can expect from using flash memory media, are adamant to place the blame on Rufus, and may take your report as further "proof" that Rufus may damage drive, whereas, when reading your experience carefully, one can only conclude that it had nothing to do with using Rufus.

the (...) method that worked for me began with Tmp341's suggestion to perform a low-level format on the flash drive.

Thanks for posting these steps. Be mindful however that a drive that fails is usually an indication of a hardware issue, most likely with the flash memory cells, and that, while you may be able to seemingly "recover" the drive using manufacturer tools (which, as far as I understand, simply tend to reset the map of bad memory cells the drive's firmware has established from past failure), it is very likely that this recovery will be short lived. At the very least, you should always run a bad blocks check to ensure that every single flash block gets written and tested before you attempt to use your drive for data again.

[lock[bot]]

This thread has been automatically locked since there has not been any recent activity after it was closed. Please open a new issue if you think you have a related problem or query.