USB Drive shows ‘Insert disk’ when Selected

Most have seen this message with other removable disks such as Floppies, Zip, etc, however, it is a little different when your USB/Flash drive show the message ‘Please insert a disk into removable disk’.

The two times I have seen this recently is with a damaged/dead drive and with a ‘fake’ drive. eBay has had several people selling the fake drives in the past months. The old rule of thumb ‘if it sounds too good to be true…’ should be used when purchasing over the internet. Do your homework on items prior to purchasing. If you see a Sony MicroVault 8 gig USB drive for sell, don’t buy it. Sony does not make an 8 gig version of this drive (the MicroVault pro line has an 8 gig, but is a 1-inch HDD).

The fake drives are typically smaller drives which have been made to show larger space available when first accessed, however, once the ‘real’ size limit is reached, they become inaccessable.

If you think you have a fake drive and it has become in accessible, there is a utility that may help you determine the ‘real’ size and make the drive usuable again. The file can be found at http://seoulcc.org/pdx8_2k_v327.zip (outside link) and a very detail document about the fake drives and the use of the program can be found at http://www.seoulcc.org/consumer-alert-sony/Report_on_Sony_Thumb_Drives.pdf (outside link).

Remember if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is