removable usb flash drive will not format

[charlieboys1]

I have a new usb 8GB removable flash drive but I can not format it, if I go to computer management and try to format it it just says at the end of the format the format did not complete successfully. its saying the drive is healthy even if I click on the drive and try to format it from that it still will not do it can anyone help

[ACtheTROLL]

you no say which brand, file system or O/s
also ... if it's new why are you (re)formatting the drive?
(why not just delete the files!)
a pendrive, mem stick (whatever you call it) isn't necessarily configured as a real drive ..... often they are just made to work like one (the flash standard(s) are very different to a mechanical drive's physical makeup

therefore reformatting willy nilly with a standard format prog can ruin the drive (that's why mfrs provide their own utilities)

should ideally use fat 32

try using
http://www.compuapps.com/download/Swissknife/s wissknife.htm

[charlieboys1]

I'm only trying to format the drive because everytime I click on it it ask me to format it and it will not let me do anything else I've look at the website you posted but the program that you can download SwissKnife makes me a bit worried to download don't want to risk doing anything to my computer

[ACtheTROLL]

It won't do anything to your computer unless you tell it to - and it's easy enough to use .... just make sure you don't have c drive selected
any disc operation is system level .... so with problems you have to use system tools

back to the drive
Assuming that you are running XP or Vista on a reasonably new machine there shouldn't be a problem.

however 8gb could cause compatibility issues on some older Mobo/ processor / bios combinations.

but if a newish machine .... it sounds like the drive is faulty
the makers will always pre-format the drive so it's ready for use (usually fat32)

but
if you've only been able to half format the drive .... the partition table is likely gone so the drive is already broken .... generally speaking you need to use a utiity to force partition/format the drive ..... which is where the knife comes in.

an alternative you could try is
windows' own disk management utility to create the partition .... then reformat

or
http://files.filefront.com/usb+formatexe/;6636 264;/fileinfo.html