I have a Kingston DT50/16GB USB stick that had been corrupted a couple of times where formatting would fix it. However this time, while copying a file, the USB got corrupted and wouldn't allow me to format it. Basically, the USB is unresponsive whenever I copy, delete, open, or create a file.
The drive is like this when plugged in:
The directories and subdirectories are accessible:
But when I delete or open a file, the USB becomes inaccessible and plugging it off and connecting it again gets it to the previous state:
This is the first time I have experienced this kind of behaviour from a USB. Formatting, disk checking, creating/removing partition, gets it to the inaccessible state. Have tried multiple formatting tools, including low level ones, even tried to flash the firmware but I wasn't able to find the correct program for that. So my question is, how do I get my USB to work again? This is what I was able to find out about my corrupted USB using some tools:
FLASH VENDOR: Kington
MODEL: DT50
VID: 0951
PID: 1666
CHIP VENDOR: Phison
MEMORY CHIP: HVKJOFC
MEMORY SIZE: 16
Any help regarding this would truly be helpful!
P.S: Data recovery tools work just fine, if that contributes.
Best Answer
It's permanently broken.
Flash drive's controller is now in read-only mode. Opening files probably doesn't work because it's trying to bump the modification date, which requires writing to flash. Recovery tools work because they use raw disk access and don't write anything.
This kind of failure is very common. It's caused by flash memory failure. Controller manufacturer's tools could maybe reset it into normal mode, but the flash has failed anyway, so it's a matter of time until controller realizes that it's not reliable and switches into read-only mode again.