Can thumb drive dead, I mean can it dead and stop functioning? I never experienced it before but I found an article how to revive your dead thumb drive in a forum. Hence, I thought it would be helpful for those who might face such problems.
There’s a “Magic Potion” that can take the drive back from death and it’s from a wizard called HP and the magic utility is called HP Boot Utility.
Officially HP Boot Utility is for HP drives. But not “only” for HP drives. Yes it can be used with almost every flash media including some memory cards too.
Usage Method
After installation the utility will place a shortcut in 'HP System Tools' in the 'Programs' start menu folder.
To make your drive key bootable and/or capable of flashing firmware:
- Place your hp USB drive key in an available USB port.
- Select the 'HP Drive Key Boot Utility' shortcut in the 'HP System Tools' folder.
- Complete each step presented by the application.
During the interview process, when asked to select the drive letter your key is using, if the drop down box is unpopulated please note that the drive key is either not properly connected to the system or is of drive type "fixed disk". To determine the type of a USB mass storage device, enter "My Computer" and right-click on the USB drive key and choose "Properties." The drive type will be displayed in the Properties pane. If the drive is labeled "fixed disk" or "local disk" the following steps must be followed to assign a drive letter to the USB drive key prior to running the HP Drive Key boot Utility.
- Insert the Drive Key.
- Login as Administrator.
- Select Start-> Programs-> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management.
- Select Computer Management (local) -> Storage -> Disk Management (local).
- Select "Change/Add Drive Letter" for the disk to map the Drive Key to.
- Choose a drive letter.
For a list of available firmware, please visit the ROM Updates page.
For SmartStart CD and Firmware Maintenance CD functionality, use the HP USB Key Utility to copy your SmartStart CD and Firmware Maintenance CD on to your portable USB key storage device.
via Bellgates (TMS Forum member)
8 comments:
Hey informative post! keep up the good work!
the info will come handy. thanks.
ammu.
Hee thank you..thank you.. :)
Hey Kesh,
dude, what exactly do you mean by a dead thumb drive, my pen drive is not being detected and shown in "My Computer" listing, so I cannot select a drive letter for it. So, obviously I cant use this software. Also, is there a way to retrieve data from my pen drive. The LED inside the drive which generally get on when we plug in the drive, is not getting on. Kindly help if you can.
Well Abhishek did you download and install the HP USB Key Utility? Like explained in
here
Yeah dude,
I tried what you said, and because the thumb drive is not detected by the system, the software does not have any drive letter to work on. The software is basically designed to copy the system boot files onto a pen drive to make it boot a system. Unfortunately, my drive has a more serious problem.
Please try if you can get something on this. The issue consists of recovering data from a dead flash memory module.
Thanks a lot.
Ouch that sounds too bad..
Hmm I try to find out solution then, dude ;)
Hey:
Looks like HP changed things on their support site, and your link to the utility download no longer works. Any chance you've got another source for downloading that utility? I could really use it.
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