it suddenly isnt recognized by 4 different computers in my house!  it doesnt show up or anything.  is there a way to format the drive without the computer detecting it? 

A usb drive that previously worked on the computers? I'm sure you've tried all the basics like restarting the computer, trying the detect new hardware wizard and what not? Assuming you are running xp you shouldn't have to install the driver from the manufacturer but I have had to do that on a couple users computers, other than that  never had one do that to me before.

i looked in the device manager and saw nothing.  i tried it on several computers and it didnt come up on any of them. 

Is it a new one? Mine all have an LED light in it to let me know when they are connected. If its new it could be a bad one, Ive had a couple of those too. What brand is it?

its a san disk mini cruzer 512mb.  the led doesnt light up.

Yeah I have a couple of those, even if the computer doesn't detect it the LED should light up.

Weaselnose, do you have USB 2.0 capable computers? Perhaps that got disabled in your bios somehow? ... but on 4-PC's I dont know.

Does your PC say something has "malfunctioned" when you plug them in? Also, are your USB jacks in the front of your PC? I've had a problem on several pc's where the front mounted USB ports don't recognize USB storage devices.... Try the ones in the back of your PC case that are directly attached to the motherboard.

Other than that, the device could be fried rice!!! They do have a limited lifecycle, ya know.

i tried front and back. on 2.0 and the old ports.  no response from computer at all whatsoever.  idk this sucks. 

I personally know of no way to recover files from a dead flash drive. Deleted files from a functioning flash drive, yeah. But it wouldn't hurt to do a Google search or call the manufacturer and see if they have some kind of a solution. You can't be the first to have this problem.   

the only thing i can think of is that i tried using it in my ps2 and it didnt work. then i tried it on my computer and that was the first i noticed it wasnt working..

Quote from: weaselnoze on April 16, 2006, 07:51:34 PM
the only thing i can think of is that i tried using it in my ps2 and it didnt work. then i tried it on my computer and that was the first i noticed it wasnt working..

trying to upload cheat codes onto the PS2 uh? you probably fried it since the PS2 appears to like USB 1.1 devices only (most pen drives are USB2).

is that you here btw? http://hardware.mcse.ms/message265509.html

i called san disk and they are replacing it. 

Did you ask if there is a way to get the data off of there? You might not care about it's contents, but just for reference sake, ya know?