Cruzer Blade will not format

I have the same issue with a Cruzer blade 16GB that I got for christmas.

Failed to work at first plug-in. It reports a disk size of 64 MB andask for format.

However I was unable to format it on Windows and MAC.

This drive was bought some time ago and can not ask for warranty as I don’t have any vendor receipt.

???  Christmas was what 10 days ago?  And the drive was bought some time ago.  So who had the drive before giving it to you?  And what were they doing with it before giving it to you?  I suggest you talk to the giver about the problem.

The giver is my syster in law and she gave it to me as she was unable to use it. She does not know much about computers. Didn’t ask where she bought the key.

The 64MB size and description of your sister-in-law leads me to suspect she removed it from her pc without using the Windows USB Safe Removal option and the FAT got screwed up.  A fairly common situation.

The unable to format under a pc or a MAC is a tougher situation. 

What kind of error msg does the pc give when you try to format it? 

Are you running Windows 7?  Are you using a Limited access user id or an Admin one? 

Try booting the pc in Safe mode and then try formatting it.  Try erasing LIGHTLY the contacts on the Blade.  Try cleaning the USB contacts on the pc.

Windows reports “CWindows was unable to complete the format”

Well, I made further testing using winhex tool that allows to write directly to disk sector.

Result is that the 64MB sectors are all 0x00 and when writing data 0xFF it get a failure and data is still 0x00.

That explains why format does not work.

When I’ll have time I’ll try a USB analyser (got one at work) to catch the SCSI messages. I would not be surprised that the USB controller reports 64MB instead of 16GB meaning it can not access the NAND FLASH memory present in the drive.

This is a bit technical, but I’m electronic engineer and build such systems in the past creating USB drives with USB mass storage class.

What does Disk Manager show when the Blade is plugged in?  And what does Device Manager show for Disk Drives and Portable Devices.

I don’t have a Blade but I do have a couple of Cruzers, and they have two drives built into them, one of which is a CD drive for U3 software.  While U3 is gone I’m wondering if the Blade is keeping the 2 drive concept and using one for SanDisk software and one for user files.  If your pc doesn’t have a drive letter available for both drives you could be looking at the wrong part of the Blade to format.

It’s a wild theory but so to is your situation.  Let me know what you find.

The wild theory is wrong.  I bought a Blade the other day to see for myself what it had and it has only the single drive.

Kinda funny to see it has an Autorun.inf file on it.  Other than assigning an icon and label to a drive they don’t do much any more.

Thus, it seems that this boot partition is down on my drive, as it can not be formated nor written.

Is this partition 64MB size on your drive ?

No, the drive shows 4GB and the 2 folders and 3 files add up to 51MB prior to creating My Vaults.  And they all have the Read Only attribute set.  With My Vaults created I’m up to 62MB.  I did not select the option to Install SecureAccess nor create an online account.

Are you able to write a volume label to the drive?  Have you tried removing the Read Only attribute from the folders shown in the root of the drive?

 As I wrote, the disk can not be formated even can not be written using sector tools. So no way to write any label or to remove the Read Only attribute from the folders as there’s none.

I was thinking more along the lines of Windows Explorer and RIGHT clicking on the folders and selecting Properties for removing the Read Only attribute.  Similar approach with the drive label.  Probably just another wild idea but you never know until you try.

Hi Sir,

I am purchase for 8 GB Pendrive Scan Disk in Powersoft Computers, Kadapa. My Pendrive is not formated. This pendrive Protected.

My Name is : R.Venkata Subbaiah

My Mobile No: 9492415143

New Pendrives are manufactured formatted.  If your’s isn’t, it isn’t new.

It’s either incredibly gutsy or incredibly stupid to post your cell phone number on a public forum for the whole world to see it like that. :confounded:

I had the same problem here.

Yesterday. I wanted to back up some things, but the drive went in the 68mb mode.

I googled, then stopped.

Today I tried, in a different computer, and hey! it’s working.

SO BEFORE YOU TRY TO FORMAT THE USB BY WHATEVER MEANS,

give it a rest, come back, on a different computer, and try.

I havn’t tried on the previous computer.

:slight_smile:

Scorpion King… This link is much appreciated. The HP software is reputable and also is a very quick fix. Anyone having unrecognized Cruzer problems should stop here first! 

Thanks Again! 

Problem Solved

http://files.extremeoverclocking.com/file.php?f=197

This is the solution. 

HP USB Disk Storage Format software

Thank you for the update and link.

Hi Sir,

I am purchase for 8 GB Pendrive Scan Disk  My Pendrive is not formated. This pendrive Protected

how formate this pendrive…

Return it, it is broken.