I got a Vista PC and a EEEPC with XP. I bought a 16gb usb flash drive and formatted it on Vista. Strangly it took a long time, about 20minutes. Anyway after I put files on it but shortly after realized the files were corrupted or were disappearing on the flash drive. I tried reformating, repartitioning, nothing helped. Thinking it's a defective drive, I exchanged it. I formatted the new 16GB drive on vista, it asks the moment you plug it in. Same it took a long time. Guess what, same problem. This 16gb drive is a different brand, this is not possible. I think Vista is messing up my flash drives. Now I bought a 8gb drive and did not connect it to vista, but instead to my EEEPC. It's already prepartitioned, and works GREAT!!! I'm afraid of plugging it into my vista machine, but regardless that is just one problem. Now I have a 16gb usb flash drive that is unusable. Anything past 1.5gb on the drive corrupts. I used both Vista/XP and even Gparted to repartition the drive. Nothing helped. If I format now, it's quick, not like the first time vista took 20min to format. I think it messed something up, don't know how to fix this. Any suggestions?

What file system did you use?

I bought a 16gb usb flash drive and formatted it on Vista. Strangly it took a long time, about 20minutes. By default in Windows Vista, the format command writes zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed. In Windows XP and in earlier versions of the Windows operating system, the format command does not write zeros to the whole disk when a full format is performed. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941961 Why did you reformat? Isn't the 16GB already formatted and ready for use? i_Xp/VistaUser

You should visit the manufacturer's web site for a utility that returns the flash drive to factory defaults. This may save your flash drive. By the way, flash drives come already formatted. If there is no need to change the flash drive from FAT to NTFS file system, then it should not be reformatted. Furthermore, I do not think Vista messes up your flash drive by just reformatting, though I did not reformat one myself. Regards SuatCINI