My Flash Drive stopped working mysteriously

[zooter]

All:

I'm using portableapps on my flash drive; so I use it daily. Suddenly few days back, the computer hung and i had to restart it

Then, the flash drive was mysteriously not being recognized by Windows. I tried in another computer and same problem. After I formatted it, it started working again.

Can a computer hang really render the drive unrecognizable? What should I do to prevent this from happening again

Many thanks

 

[jmacavali]

If the drive was reading/writing to the USB stick than it's possible the file system on it or something got corrupted.

 

[chris321]

Next time it crashes open disk management to see if it is seen there without a letter.

If it is not seen there you can run testdisk and repair the partition.

 

[zooter]

The drive letter was seen. When I double-clicked on it in Windows, it was saying "Drive not formatted"

 

[chris321]

Then you would have to use testdisk to repair the partition

 

[zooter]

now too late as I've already formatted it, next time will use testdisk. Is this a utility that I have to download or are you referring to the default windows scandisk?

 

[chris321]

Yes I am referring to a third party utility