Solved Flash Drive Corruption

Of course I have a flash drive that I like to use. It is heavily used and often filled to almost all of its capacity. Just a few minutes ago I was using it with my XP computer and I opened up one of my folders to find that all of my files were gone to be replaced with folders and files with strange characters. If I try deleting anything, it says the directory does not exist. All that I can do is to format it. After formatting, I plugged it into my Vista but it said that it was corrupted or unreadable. I am wondering if it is a virus or if I should just get a new flash drive.
It is a Toshiba transmemory 8gb

Hallo hyperlinx, have you tried plugging it in then right click on the drive then select properties & then the Tools tab.
From here you can check the drive for errors & hopefully repair it



Also when you did the format did you deselect Quick & then select Restore device defaults.

I hope this is of some help

First of all, when I try to format on my Vista, it will load for about 10 minutes then say "Windows was unable to complete the format" It will appear on my XP computer and I can save files to it but it does not even appear in Vista. If I try to so much as right click on it, it says "The directory is corrupted or unreadable"

Have you tried the procedure i mentioned on you XP machine, the default format should be Fat32.
Other than that all i can suggest is to look at this thread there are a number of 3rd party USB formatting tools listed

USB reformat beyond recovery - Windows 7 Forums

The solution was easier than I thought. I used command prompt to format it and it automatically formatted in FAT32. Thank you for the help!

hyperlinx said:

The solution was easier than I thought. I used command prompt to format it and it automatically formatted in FAT32. Thank you for the help!

Click to expand...

Glad you got it sorted