USB drive refresh (XP w/ sp2)

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I am having trouble reformatting some USB drives (camera cards). Format tells me something is using the drive so it cannot proceed. But no program actually is using the drive at that time. It seems like something needs to refresh the drive or the USB controller, or the file manager is not eltting go of some software hook or something.

Any ideas on what could be causing this problem?
Thx.

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Are these chips in the camera or a USD hub?

I have never reformated a memory chip for a camera or a USB thumbdrive. All I have done is “DELETE” the files and folders and all has worked just fine.

DaveA I am so far behind, I think I am First
Genealogy....confusing the dead and annoying the living

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I have seen this happening in Windows Explorer if you first select the drive, before you right click to Format. Try selecting My Computer, make sure that you have not expanded the drive you want to format (in the left hand pane) and then right click and choose format.

StuartR

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After seeing Stuart’s post, I remembered that my USB external card reader behaves as he described in Windows Explorer except that I’ve only used it for “Properties” to see how many pictures and how much space, etc. I only have two such cards, as I’m not much of a photog. The large one is in my camera. So, I pulled out the 8 meg one that came with the camera and did a test. I put it in the card reader and opened Windows Explorer. What you see in the attachment is the red box around my card reader, one of those 6-in-1 things, so it creates two logical drives. The little card I just mentioned is in Drive H: right now.

If I right-click on the upper level (highlighted in blue) the format command appears in the context list. If I right-click on one of the two lower levels, the format command does NOT appear. However, here’s the DANGER! When I clicked on the format command, just to see that it was going to continue to the next screen, it did so. I then clicked cancel, but the doggone thing evidently DID NOT cancel. It seems to have now wiped out the few files that were on the card and I can’t do anything else with this stick right now! When I right-click on it now and select Properties, it says ZERO bytes FAT, so it looks like the simple act of clicking on format has zapped my little ol’ card. Be careful – or – you also may have already zapped yours as well!

I’m off now to see if mine can be rectified, but I thought I’d leave these words, discouraging sounding as they may be!

Added: Drives C and D are internal SATA; Drives E and F are external USB; Drive G and H are the stick reader.

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Back so soon? Yeah, a correction. Aside from a typo (the card is 16 meg, not 8 meg), I stuck the card back in and opened My Computer, Manage, Disk Management which is what you see below. The card has NOT been zapped and the few files are still there. Evidently the mere act of clicking “format” put my PC in a slow-down mode and that’s why I was seeing what looked like a bummer. I know, I still haven’t answered your question for I didn’t complete the format process. But you may want to try disk management to see what yours says.

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The manuals of both my Canon and my son’s HP digital camera’s specifically state that the SD cards should only be formatted in the camera, using the build-in Format command, and not with an external device. Doing so several times never caused neither me, nor my son any problems.

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