Rufus Damaged my USB. Windows can not detect USB

Question

I was using Rufus (on Windows 8) to create a bootable Windows 7 USB installer but midway through I canceled it. Now my USB drive is not detected by Windows or Rufus.

Is it possible to fix this?

Edit: The USB drive shows up in Device Manager.

Answer 1

As the author of Rufus, I can tell you exactly what happened.

First of all, Rufus didn't damage your USB drive. It only removed the letter Windows assigned it, which it needs to do to be able to repartition and format it, and since you cancelled that operation, the drive letter was not assigned back. This is why you couldn't see it in Explorer, but you could still see it in Device Manager/Disk Manager.

The simple option, to make your drive listed again so that you could format it and get a letter reassigned, was to follow this entry from the Rufus FAQ. A couple of clicks in Rufus was all that was needed.

Also, the latest versions of Rufus has improved the default enumeration process and will automatically list raw or unpartitioned drives, so you should no longer have to do anything even if you cancel in the middle of a bad blocks check or a format operation.

Answer 2

I was able to fix the damaged USB by doing the following:

1. Go in Start > write “cmd” > right-click the Windows Command Prompt and choose to run it as an Administrator.
2. At the prompt, enter “DISKPART” to launch Microsoft’s disk management utility. It will take a second until it loads and when ready it will read “DISKPART>”.
3. Type in “list disk” to show a list of all disk drives. If your USB key is plugged into your PC, it should be listed here, along with other drives. Note the USB key’s disk number – you can pick it out by looking at the disk capacity.
4. Type “select disk n" (whatever is your USB disk number in place of "n").
5. Type “clean” for the utility to clean the disk, which DiskPart will confirm.
6. Create a new partition by entering “create partition primary”.
7. Choose this partition with “select partition 1", and then mark it as active by typing “active”.
8. Format the key by inputting “format fs=fat32". This should take a few minutes, and DiskPart will display a progress percentage.
9. Lastly, type “assign” to give this USB key a drive letter and “exit” to exit DiskPart.

From here: http://www.sevenforums.com/hardware-devices/218512-usb-flash-drive-not-recognized.html#post1831343

Answer 3

The simple fix for this is to repartition your USB drive using Partition Wizard software. This will be the easy method for people who are not at all experts in command line.

Download Partition Wizard from here

• After Plugging in the USB, Open the Partition wizard software.
• Spot your USB Drive in the list.
• Just right click and delete the existing parttiion. Again rightclick and create new. Click Apply.

Thats it. Your USB drive is back to work without any confusions.

let me know if u got struct somewhere.

Answer 4

I fixed the issue along the lines suggested by pbatard (but he did not detail what to do).

1. Open Disk Management. In the command prompt, type diskmgmt.msc. You may have to hit Ctrl+Enter to get Admin access. Or see this.

2. You will probably see the USB flash. Right click on it, select Change Drive Letter and Paths.

3. You will probably see that it has no assigned letter. Assign one.

This brought back my flash drive, in its original state (with all files present prior to running Rufus). That is it.

Answer 5

I was faced with a similar issue.

I'd connected my flash memory to a USB 3.1 port and Windows 10 could not recognize it with the new format.

I just put it into a USB 3 port and it worked.