[SOLVED] memtest ate my flash drive

[tts]

Hey there. Not entirely sure which forum this should go in but I guess we can start here.

Anyways, I was having some computer problems the other day and needed to run memtest so I installed it to my flash drive from the liveCD version of ubuntu. Now, I've deleted everything I can see and formatted it several times yet it is only showing 7 MB available and in disk management there is 3.74 GB on an unallocated partition.

I can't remember the commands used to install memtest, or where the durn tutorial on it is, but surely this isn't permanent. Any ideas as to how I can clear any remnants of memtest and utilize the whole drive? Thanks.

[oz]

Welcome to the forums!

I'd try running gparted on it if you haven't done so already.

[sarlacii]

Hmmm, you probably wrote the test app to it's own partition.
"gparted" is a GUI for the command line app "parted". Be very careful when you select partitions, especially if you use the command line version, to make sure you do not select one of your HDD's instead of your flash disk!
Good luck.

[tts]

Okay I finally finished downloading ubuntu 64-bit and went into gparted. It showed it as unallocated so I made a partition on it but it is now showing as 8.4 MB rather than 4 GB.

[oz]

You could try wiping the flash drive MBR and partition tables with this command to see if it helps:

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdx bs=512 count=1

You'll need to replace the bold letter "x" with the letter representing your flash drive.

Have the drive plugged in and run fdisk -l to find the correct device letter.

Be careful here running the dd command, or you could damage some part of your system if you enter the letter of the wrong drive.

[tts]

Okay, I ran that command and the whole drive was showing up as unallocated space. But when I went to create a new partition on it, there was an error before it finished and now it isn't being recognized.

[oz]

It's beginning to sound like this drive had met it's doom. I really don't know of anything else to try on it other than perhaps running TestDisk on it, or returning it to the manufacturer for replacement if it's still under warranty.

You can find TestDisk on the Parted Magic LiveCD if you want to give it a go.

[tts]

Okay, this has been quite a weird scenario. I rebooted into windows and it registered fine just saying that the drive needed a format. After that everything seems to be working fine. =s

Thanks for your replies! =)