Memory stick utility?

[flashsnaps]

I have a memory stick brought in by a Teacher, I have recovered the contents of the stick but the stick still doesn't play ball!

She says she plugged it into a Mac, When I plug it into a windows machine it says "Disk is not formatted, format now" I format it and it doesn't format.

Before I chuck it - I was wondering is there is a free utlity I could run which would repair it?

[Dafty]

If it has been formatted originaly as a Mac Journal or another non windows comaptible format, then I would doubt that you can.

I know that this may seem the obvious, but cant you plug it back into the mac and retrieve the files?

[flashsnaps]

She was using it on windows computers before, but now it doesn't work after putting it in a mac. The files are not the problem, I've retrieved them using a data recovery software, but I can't get the memory stick functioing properly - keeps saying do you want to format.

[OutToLunch]

Generally, once they've reached the "Disk not formatted" stage, they're knackered! With 4gb being about £5-8 now it's a lot less hassle to get a new one...

[j17sparky]

We had a batch of several hundred sticks which exibited the same problems you are having. Just got them replaced