Recovering a damaged PQI flash drive

:: Sunday, July 8th, 2007 @ 7:56:19 pm

:: Tags: Computers

I love my PQI 4GB Cool Drive U339 Pro. It is very fast, inexpensive, and lives in a tiny, compact case. (Note that other PQI models may be much slower than the “Pro” versions). The only drawback is that it mounts as two drives when connected to a computer, one being a read-only partition with useless “USB Notebook Software.” I hate stuff like this.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, the drive started behaving strangely when connected to my computers, and it finally died on me a few days later. I contacted PQI support, who recommended that I download and run a Windows-based repair utility. The repair utility seems to have repaired the drive, and as a bonus, it also removed the second partition with the useless software. So if you own one of these Cool Drives, you might want to run the repair utility even if yours is in perfect working condition! (I take no responsibility in what happens, though — the decision to run the program is yours alone.)

UPDATE: Another cool thing I did was install Mac OS X on a partition of my flash drive and install Disk Warrior on it. So now, if my primary drive(s) fail while I’m on the road, I can boot OS X from flash and try to repair things.

Popularity: 4% | Oakland, CA | link | trackback | qrcode | Jul 8, 2007 19:56:19

:: View Comments (rss)

1. posted by echeng on Mon, August 06, 2007 @ 8:56 am

   There is an updated utility from PQI (v1.0.1.8), so you might have to contact PQI directly to get it.

2. posted by JB on Wed, December 24, 2008 @ 1:48 am

   hey thx, i think it fixed my 2 GB PQI flash drive

3. posted by Keith Smith on Fri, June 19, 2009 @ 5:52 am

   Hi Eric,

   Thanks to you I have reformatted my pqi8Gb drive using the urescue utility. After many hours searching and trying many so-called utilities, I am now happy.

   With win xp I could only format it to 250Mb fat32. Cheers Keith

4. posted by horace on Sun, August 09, 2009 @ 7:49 pm

   hi, hope u can help me, i have a u339 1gb piq memory usb, i tried to delete the files on it, but send me write protected,.. is there a way to remove this protection in order to manipulate the files??

   thanks in advance ! best regards . looking forward for some feedback !

5. posted by mariz on Fri, September 11, 2009 @ 3:15 am

   hi Mr. Eric,

   i downloaded your software but it doest work with my pqi flash drive, it appears an error. Is there any software that can repair my flash drive?

   Will appreciate it very much. Please..

   Many thanks,

   Mariz

6. posted by Abraham Bruck on Mon, December 07, 2009 @ 9:34 pm

   When I try to install it; it says I need Administrator rights, and I am the Administrator; any ideas?

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