Hi Sylvander,
if none of your recent experiments have produced a mountable filesystem on your flash drive, I have found one other thing that you might try.
First, just to verify that nothing has changed, try this one last time:
If you still get the familiar:
Code: Select all
Disk /dev/sdb: 1010 MB, 1010826752 bytes
196 heads, 9 sectors/track, 1119 cylinders, total 1974271 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0009dcf9
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 2048 1972223 985088 b W95 FAT32
showing that your partition is still type b (W95 FAT32), then your attempt on Wednesday to change it to type 83 (Linux) did not succeed, even though you did your best to write it to the drive. This means that your partition table is still unwritable, and no miraculous recovery has happened since we first established that it was unwritable at the beginning of last week.
(On the other hand, if by some miracle the partition type
has changed, please report that, and ignore the remainder of this post.)
The write error that you got when you tried Win32DiskImager.exe is a further indication that the drive doesn't want to be written to.
So, I did some searching and found that some manufacturers provide utilities to fix a drive that is no longer writable. Unfortunately, I could not find such a utility on the Verbatim web site.
But I found an interesting post by someone who used a utility provided by another manufacturer to fix a Verbatim 1GB drive:
On 2008-May-11, at fixya.com, 'Guest' wrote:I solved write protection on my Verbatim store 'n' go 1 GB by this program "HT203 Handy Steno 2.0 Repair Tool" which format FLASH DISK from
http://emea.apacer.com/en/support/downloads.asp . I know its different manufacturer but its working.
On that same page (
http://www.fixya.com/support/t259854-tu ... rbatim_4gb) other people reported success with that utility, although they don't say if they had Verbatim drives.
The URL given by 'Guest' seems to be no longer valid, but I did track down what looks to be possibly a newer version of the same utility at this URL:
http://ap.apacer.com/support/download/r ... ,0,/page/4
Utility HT203 8 2.0 Repair Tool English WinME/2000/XP/Vista 139.72kb 2008/03/14
(If it no longer appears on that page (page 4), look on the other pages, or try a search from
http://ap.apacer.com/support/download/.)
Clicking the symbol in the Download column will download a .zip file with this name: Repair_v2.9.1.1.zip
Note that this is not a Linux utility, it's for certain versions of Windows. I have no idea if it will work with "FalconFour's UBCD->MiniXP", which is apparently the closest thing you have to Windows. But it might.
Before you decide whether or not you want to try this utility, you should consider these three things:
1. I have had no experience with this utility, nor do I have a Verbatim drive (or even an Apacer drive) to test it on. All we know is that one person posted an answer to a question at fixya.com and claimed that the utility fixed a "Verbatim store 'n' go 1 GB" flash drive. That is a hopeful sign, but certainly no guarantee that it will work for you.
2. Apacer offers this utility for Apacer drives, not Verbatim drives. While it is very possible that the design of the Verbatim drive is similar to the design of the Apacer drive, and that the utility will work properly with a Verbatim drive, as reported by 'Guest', running a utility on a piece of hardware that the utility was not designed for is generally not a good idea, as it might even cause damage. While we hope that we can believe 'Guest', running this utility is something that should probably be done only when all other options have been exhausted, just in case 'Guest' is wrong, and the utility would damage your drive. (Of course, as it is now your drive is unusable, so unless you can find an official Verbatim utility there is probably nothing else you can do to fix this, so any further damage would not leave you any worse off than you are now.)
3. As I've said before, it is quite possible that your drive has physically died. In that case using the utility will obviously not help. (On the bright side, if it
has died, using the utility wouldn't hurt, either.
)
Anyway, this is something to try when you reach the end of your rope, and are on the verge of tossing the drive out of the window. (I probably would have reached that point long ago.
You have more patience than I.)
And, despite all I said above about why this utility might not work, I still think that it might be your best bet. Unless you want to spend time on what might be a futile search for an official Verbatim utility, I can think of nothing else to try.
If it was my drive, I'd try mounting it one more time just to be sure none of your recent experiments helped. Then I'd try the utility.
But I can certainly understand if you choose not to.
Good luck.