usb drive format

timbo2410 · 25 May 2012 at 20:17

Hi all, just got a pair of Patriot 8gb usb drives. Plugged em in but cannot format. Just get a "cannot format" error .. any hints here please. I just want to laod it with mp3's for the car ..

Surveyor · 25 May 2012 at 20:38

Are they new?

Are they encrypted or protected in some way?

Did you get them from a reliable source?

timbo2410 · 25 May 2012 at 20:54

yep .. brand new .. ocuk .. Patriot 8gb .. tried both of them .. no go .. win7 wants to format so I go yep format me baby and it takes about 5 minutes and I get the error "cannot format" .. with no explaination ..

Surveyor · 25 May 2012 at 21:09

Have you tried a different USB port?

Aren't the drives already formatted?

Patriot have a utility to low level format the drive: http://www.patriotmemory.com/partners/usb_restore/Restore.rar

timbo2410 · 25 May 2012 at 21:31

yep tried both usb ports on front of case. But not the ones at the rear. The drives show up in "my computer" even though they will not format nor can I access them ...

Surveyor · 25 May 2012 at 21:42

Have you tried the Patriot utility?

Try looking at the drives in Disk Management.

See if you can delete whatever partition(s) they have on them and then format the drives in Disk Management.

timbo2410 · 25 May 2012 at 22:25

I've looked under disc management and all appears well. It's listed as healthy, fat 32 (which I need for the car audio system to be able to read), and has a primary partition. I haven't used the patriot utility .. am looking for it now ..

Surveyor · 25 May 2012 at 22:38

timbo2410 said:
I haven't used the patriot utility .. am looking for it now ..

I linked it above.

http://www.patriotmemory.com/partners/usb_restore/Restore.rar

timbo2410 · 26 May 2012 at 08:15

ran the utility and it comes up as "failed format" ??? it's the same for both sticks ???

Surveyor · 26 May 2012 at 08:42

Not sure what else you can do.

Is it possible you have 2 faulty drives?

Contact OcUK via the Customer Service forum.

timbo2410 · 26 May 2012 at 08:47

I'm just trying to do a clean and format through the command prompt now .. if that doesn't work I will contact OCUK ...

timbo2410 · 26 May 2012 at 09:04

ok here is what the error is in the command prompt:
Diskpart has encountered an error: the semaphore timeout period has expired.

Time to contact OCUK me thinks ...

Surveyor · 26 May 2012 at 09:13

Perhaps try something else in the USB ports just make sure they're working properly.

timbo2410 · 26 May 2012 at 09:28

have been using my joystick and digital camera off the same two ports ..

timbo2410 · 26 May 2012 at 09:29

I can see the Patriot drive in "my computer" .. I can also see the drive as being healthy in disk manager .. just can't format it .. or use it at all ??

Surveyor · 26 May 2012 at 09:32

It sounds like it's the drives then.

timbo2410 · 26 May 2012 at 09:47

would being in safe mode make any differnece .. or maybe get out of windows and try the command prompt ??

Surveyor · 26 May 2012 at 10:00

timbo2410 said:
would being in safe mode make any differnece .. or maybe get out of windows and try the command prompt ??

No idea but you really shouldn't need to do any of that.

You should simply be able to plug it in, format if necessary and be good to go.

timbo2410 · 26 May 2012 at 10:03

I just cannot believe that I have two faulty sticks ... I must be doing something wrong somewhere ... I will start again ...

timbo2410 · 26 May 2012 at 10:46

I've just downloaded HP format tool and tried to run it but it is giving the error "USB drive is write protected" ... does this with both sticks ..