Worn out USB Flash Drive - Repairable?

[maverick77_uk]

Hi there,

I've got a 8gb USB flash drive (or pen / thumb drive, whatever you want to call it!). Of late, files have been getting corrupted. Reformatting etc. has not helped.

I used it for backup, so I've now got a new one for backup, so all is well.

However, I know this is the sign of a dying USB drive etc etc. but it would be useful to still use it for file transfer of unimportant data - video / mp3s the like. Is there anyway you can map and exclude bad sectors / blocks on a USB drive so that they are not used and the filesystem only uses the good parts of the chip? I know this is doable on hard drives, but as mapping of data is not so consistent on flash drives - any ideas / programs I could use to do this?

A Google search just says "get a new drive" which I have done. But as said, keeping it for file transfers that don't matter would be useful.

Thanks all!

[kalniel]

Can you chkdsk USB drives? That might mark 'bad sectors' - they are still a fixed physical location on flash memory I think.

[peterb]

I'm pretty sure that the embedded controller on these devices does map out bad cells so if you are getting lots of errors, the drive is pretty much dead. Reformatting wouldn't help - all that does is install the file system.

[WoLFe]

More hassle than it's worth; even if its not crucial data. It would still be annoying if you put 8gigs worth of music on it and you couldn't retrieve it off the stick properly.

[maverick77_uk]

Hi all,

Thanks for the replies. Nope, Chkdsk doesn't seem to work. It finds bad sectors, but says couldn't fix because the /F suffix wasn't used. If you add that, it says it can't do it because teh drive is mounted. If you unmount the drive, it can't find the drive (in Windows). Could Badblocks in Linux maybe do the same? Badblocks itself doesn't seem to "fix", you have to invoke e2fsk, which in turn can only work on ext2 partitions, not FAT16 or 32 (the usual for flash disks so that they are universally recognised *sigh* Maybe it is time for the bin!

[peterb]

You could try writing zeros to all locations with the dd command - then reformat

dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/usb_drive (where usb_drive is the actual location

and then try re-formatting (ie, adding a file system) but it is a bit of a last ditch, and I wouoldn't trust it. They are cheap as choips and as Wolfe says, not worth the hassle.

[maverick77_uk]

Hi all,

I couldn't find / get any programs to check or sort the USB drive, so in the end I wrote a PERL script in Linux to fill the 8GB drive with 1MB files of known content, then read back the files. Those that were as they should be were deleted. Those that were wrong were left. The result, a drive with a bunch of files on "covering over" bad data positions. Hid the files in Windows (and by adding a "." in Linux). Seems to work fine now. What the problem ended up being though, is the drive was a "fake". It has a 2GB chip, but the controller reported it as a 8GB. As a result, the first 2GB data was fine, the next 50MB was filled with errors (now blocked off due to my "dead files"), and anything after that disappeared into the Abyss! That's what you get from buying one cheap from Hong Kong on Ebay! Anyway, now got a perfectly usable 2GB drive for file transfer.

I had to laugh anyway! Cheers again for your advices (is that a word?)

[Powderhound]

Hi all,

I couldn't find / get any programs to check or sort the USB drive, so in the end I wrote a PERL script in Linux to fill the 8GB drive with 1MB files of known content, then read back the files. Those that were as they should be were deleted. Those that were wrong were left. The result, a drive with a bunch of files on "covering over" bad data positions. Hid the files in Windows (and by adding a "." in Linux). Seems to work fine now. What the problem ended up being though, is the drive was a "fake". It has a 2GB chip, but the controller reported it as a 8GB. As a result, the first 2GB data was fine, the next 50MB was filled with errors (now blocked off due to my "dead files"), and anything after that disappeared into the Abyss! That's what you get from buying one cheap from Hong Kong on Ebay! Anyway, now got a perfectly usable 2GB drive for file transfer.

I had to laugh anyway! Cheers again for your advices (is that a word?)

That's quite a neat solution actually.