[RESOLVED] DriveCleanser Bricked my USB Drive
I ran DriveCleanser on my Toshiba portable 1T USB drive, selecting the Bruce Schneier algorithm.
The status box popup showed first that the program was calculating the time required to cleanse the drive. Then the program went ahead and cleansed the drive, with the bar slowly moving across the display until the entire disk had been cleaned. This took a few hours. When it looked like the process was complete it put up another notice that it was 'calculating' the time required to finish; but for about 4 hours nothing changed.
At that point I figured it was either done, or the program had hung, so I clicked on the 'Cancel' button.
The program cancelled out gracefully. When I went back to windows explorer to see what the drive looked like and clicked on it, windows told me I had to format the drive. Fine, I told it to go ahead and format. At which point windows told me it couldn't format the drive.
After closing all programs and disconnecting and re-connecting the drive, windows now can no longer see the drive at all, much less attempt to format it. I've rebooted, and tried to format the drive on several other machines, no joy.
So basically it's bricked.
Anyone have any idea about what happened, or better yet how to revive the sucker.
And obviously I'm less than thrilled about using DriveCleanser again.
Issue resolved here.
Hello all,
Thank you for taking time to contact us.
It looks like the operation has been aborted.
Robert,
I would like to add to Pat's comment, that it will be useful if you perform the Add new disk operation under Acronis Boot Media. Or you can use a freeware Linux partition editor tool to format the drive.
Thank you.
It is easy to use Diskpart to initialize your drive, here is how to do it:
1. Go to "All Programs" and "Accessories", then right-click on "Command Prompt". Select "Run as administrator", then click "Yes". You should get a command prompt window with a "C:\Windows\system32>" prompt.
2. Enter "diskpart" and press enter. That should come back with a "DISKPART>" prompt.
3. Enter "list disk" and press enter. That will list the drives currently available on your system. Note: the size listed will likely be somewhat smaller than the drive's GB size.
4. Enter "select disk ?", where "?" is the disk number of the drive you want to initialize. CAUTION: "Disk 0" is typically the system drive, do not select it unless you're absolutely sure that is the one you want to initialize!
5. Enter "clean" and press enter. Diskpart will confirm the disk has been cleaned.
6. Enter "create partition primary". This will create a partition on the drive.
7. Enter "select partition 1". This will select the partition you just created.
8. Enter "format fs=ntfs label="Your-Label" (where "Your-Label" is the label you want assigned to the drive. This will format the drive, and put a label on it. That can take some time, so you can get a cup of coffee or two while this runs.
9. Enter "assign". This will assign a drive letter to the drive you just initialized.
10. Enter "Exit". This will exit diskpart.
11. Enter "Exit". This will exit the command prompt window.
Here is a sample Diskpart session, in it I initialize a 4GB Flash Drive:
Microsoft Windows [Version 6.1.7601]
Copyright (c) 2009 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
C:\Windows\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MY-PC
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 298 GB 1024 KB
Disk 1 Online 3872 MB 0 B
DISKPART> select disk 1
Disk 1 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> clean
DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.
DISKPART> create partition primary
DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.
DISKPART> select partition 1
Partition 1 is now the selected partition.
DISKPART> format fs=ntfs label="Memorex-4GB"
100 percent completed
DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.
DISKPART> assign
DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.
DISKPART> exit
Leaving DiskPart...
C:\Windows\system32>exit
Thanks for the help folks, you managed to get my drive back!!
I had to spend a bit of time getting my courage up to run DISKPART and make sure I selected the correct drive, not wanting to 'clean' the wrong drive.
In any case I did follow your instructions and have my Toshiba back in fine order.
The only other question I have is about my original experience with DriveCleanser. Was this a fluke, or should I have left the program running when it looked like it had hung. I clicked Cancel because there were no status messages telling me that the program was still working, it was just showing that it was calculating the time left, when in fact it looked like it had finished according to the progress bar which looked to be 100% finished.
Not sure whether this is fluke. Several users have had issues with the drive cleaning tool. I wouldn't probably have canceled the operation as well, seeing the program seemingly hung. The good thing is that you have plenty of free drive cleansing alternatives out there if you are concerned with security/privacy.
Note that having "cleaned" the drive didn't accomplish that.
Excellent point. Just because the program ran for many hours before it hung, is no reason to believe it finished its job.
I just downloaded Kill Disk, and will give that a shot.
Thanks again.
Even when the Drive Cleaning Tool completes normally, it will leave the drive in an "uninitialized" state; that is, you have to use Diskpart or the "Add Disk" tool in ATIH to create a partition on the drive before you can use it.