Repairing Corrupted USB Pen Drives with HP Format Utility

Posted by Deradja Tuesday, January 10, 2012 0 comments

Recently one of my USB pen drive got corrupted. Windows 7 built in format utility was unable to format it. I tested it windows vista and windows xp. But it seems all kind of Windows operating systems are unable to handle this issue. The USB flash is Kingston manufacturer and it was 128GB that might be an expensive gadget for a lot of people these days. It was about 120 US $ when purchased, so loosing this device would be a not easy option for me, I started searching over google how to repair this kind of corrupted USB or how to repair corrupted usb pen drive.

In the mean time I also tested it via Ubuntu linux but it didn’t work for me. A lot of people recommended me right click my computer icon in windows and choose Manage option. Then go to disk management and delete the partition, change drive letter and then re format it, it didn’t work also. Another blog recommended me to check for file system errors in drive properties, that I was trying all day long and it didn’t work too. Then I found a recommendation by Martin Brinkmann at ghacks.net

The format utility was available at PC-World and Cnet downloads with the name SP27608.exe HP USB Disk Storage Format Too
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
I downloaded it and tried to format my USB drive with it and finally this utility worked and solved my problem. So if you are in same case and want to format your USB drive that cannot be formatted with ordinary windows tools, try this. I hope it helps.
The process of using this utility is very simple. Just launch the utility with Administrator rights, a window like above will appear that will automatically select the pen drive that is connected to your computer at that moment. First try with quick format option. It will take few minutes depending on the size of your USB flash disk, if this process don’t work, try the second option by un-checking “Quick format”. Now it will take more time but you will get a better probability of success.