USB flash drives are this century's floppies, holding everything from personal and medical information to music and pictures and even secure data, with the added advantage of being small and rugged enough for keychain duty. You can even boot from flash drives, just like the old floppies, which, together with portability, universal compatibility, and enough space to host useful tools, makes them ideal recovery devices. Hewlett-Packard's USB Disk Storage Format Tool can quickly and thoroughly format virtually any USB flash drive in a wide range of file systems as well as create bootable USB media. We tested it in Windows 7.
This compact tool has an equally compact interface, an efficient little dialog with selections for Device and File system, and an entry field for Volume label, and check boxes for format options, including the ability to create a bootable DOS start-up disk using either internal system files or files at a location you can specify. Other than Start and Close buttons, that's it, not even a Help file, though this tool is easy enough to figure out without one. We moved the data off of an older 1GB flash drive and inserted the drive in an open USB port. HP USB immediately identified it and its file type, FAT. We chose to reformat it in NTFS and enable compression. We clicked Start, and a pop-up warned us all data on the drive would be lost. We allowed it to proceed, and it formatted the drive in seconds. Clicking Close called up a small dialog with detailed information about the drive. We then moved the data back to the newly reformatted drive, ejected it, reinserted it, and verified that everything was in order, including our portable apps.
I have a PC with Windows 7 that goes into the Error Recovery Screen. When I try to tell it to start windows normally the keyboard is not working. The keyboard works during boot and works once the error recovery starts but not during the screen that looks somewhat like the safe mode screen.
My only other computer is the house is a MacBook with OS X 10.8.2. Ive installed Crossover and I am trying to run the HP tool to make a bootable USB and put awdflash and bios v18 on it. I have successfully installed the HP tool but when I got to use it the USB drive is not listed in the devices.
1) As for Crossover, you might have to manually add the usb stick as a drive to your bottle. In the "Control Panel" of the bottle manager, you will find "winecfg". In that tool you will find a "drives" tab (something like that as I'm translating for my french version). In the drives tab, you will be able to add you usb stick with it's path. Hopefully, your utility will accept it after you have added it.
2) Have you tried booting your mahcine in safe mode. Each time I had a keayboard problem on a windows machine, the "safe mode" sort of "fixed" it for me. Afterward, I could boot back the normal way and the keyboard worked. That might allow you to run the utility and get you going without needing your Mac.
3) If you can't get it running, you could try virtualbox on your Mac. Depending on your win7 install disk, you could install in it a virtual machine, then give control of your usb stick to it, and have the utility run in the virtual machine. Unlike Parallels or Vmware, virtualbox is free to use in non commercial situations.
Thanks for the help. I will def bookmark this thread. But it worked today. Dont know what I did besides load defaults on the BIOS. Something must have gotten changed that was affecting the keyboard function.
The long answer: Basically low-level hardware things don't work well in CrossOver. Serial IO(COM-ports) work with some fiddling. Low-level access to a drive partition is possible, but I don't think you can access the partition table or boot sector - which this tool probably wants to change to make the USB disk bootable.
What is the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool? It is a free program that allows you to format file USBs on Microsoft Windows PCs and laptops. It was developed and released by Hewlett-Packard, and its appearance is similar to the Windows native disk management version, bringing a convenient user experience for users who are already familiar with Windows systems. Here is a table for you to learn the pros and cons of the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool:
However, if you have other USB flash drives from different brands, turn to EaseUS Partition Master to format them. This tool supports all popular USB flash drives, such as HP, Sandisk, Kingston, etc. Compared to the HP USB Flash Drive Format Tool, this tool supports more file systems, like ext2/3/4. It performs the format without administrator permission.
Sometimes, HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool may fail to format. During formatting, you may receive an error message, "The device media is write-protected." You can remove write protection by the following methods.
Some portable drives have a lock switch to protect the drive during transport. You can push the switch to the opposite position and try again. In most cases, this simple switch will unlock the drive and allow it to be used normally.
You can also encounter write-protected errors when using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool if your HP USB flash drive is set to read-only mode. Therefore, you can remove the read-only attribute via Command Prompt.
The HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool may also fail with a write-protect error when the USB drive has bad sectors or errors. You can use the CHKDSK.exe tool to check and fix USB flash drive errors. Here's how:
If the file system of the U disk is damaged and the U disk is write-protected, you can use EaseUS Partition Master. This tool can forcibly format a USB with a damaged file system or remove the write protection before formatting, which is very suitable for novices. Here's how:
In this article, you can get a detailed guide on the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool and how to troubleshoot device media write-protected issues. It is worth mentioning that if you are not very good at using this tool, or there are many other USBs that need to be formatted, it is recommended that you use EaseUS Partition Master. This is one of the best HP USB Disk Storage Format tool alternatives in the market.
You are able to remove write protection from your USB drive by opening the 'Command Prompt' application from the Windows menu. In the Command Prompt application, enter diskpart, list disk, select disk X, and attributes disk clear readonly. After cleaning and converting the disk or drive, you can proceed with formatting in HP Tools.
HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool is software for Windows computers. Using this program, users can easily format any USB drive in NTFS, FAT32, or FAT file system. The tool can also create a DOS bootable disk, allowing users to boot Windows PCs conveniently.
do you have the option to delete volume for the partition that is on the drive? If so delete the partition so the entire drive is unallocated. Once that is done recreate the partition and format the drive.
if that is not an option you can try the HP Disk storage format tool just do a google search for that it is a free download. Use that to format the drive. the HP disk storage format tool can sometimes fix issues like this.
The HP Notebook System Bios Update utility has an option to "Create a bootable USB Disk on Key" but it does not work. I follow the onscreen instruction untli I get to the "HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, V2.2.3"; I see that the option to "Create a DOS startup disk" is selected but grayed out and the source files points to a directory called FreeDOS; that folder only contains a file called Kernel.SYS.
When I click on Start, my USB key gets formatted and the Bios files are copied to it but the key is not bootable. I tried to create a bootable USB key to update an Elitebook 8440P, a 8530P and a 8540P using their respective files but I end up with unbootable USB keys. Files are missing to boot from DOS (command.com, IO.sys, MSDOS.sys)
Please identify your notebook/pc with more than the series number. Look at the base/rear/side of the notebook/pc at the barcoded sticker. Post everything you see on the sticker there except the serial number.
Post the installed operating system version ( and whether it is 32 or 64-bit)