Memory Sticks no longer being recognised

Yesterday the PSP stopped recognising my SanDisk memory stick. Thinking the stick had corrupted, I tried the Sony 32meg stick that came with the console and had never been used. Again the console didn't recognise it.

Now could someone tell me how serious is this problem and are there any tips that people could suggest to aid me?

Does your PC recognise either of the memory sticks. If yes then make sure the sticks are formatted FAT16. If the PSP still does not recognise the sticks then you have a big problem with your PSP.

If however your PC and PSP do not recognise the sticks then they are corrupted. If you have access to a Mac you can format the sticks for use in the Mac and then when you connect them back to a PC you may be able to reformat them. I had a 1GB Sandisk stick go bad on me once and had to get a warranty exchange. Hope this is not the case with yours. Good luck.

Hi SoCal, thanks for the reply.

Yes, both of them can't be recognised under Windows which is rather annoying, so it looks like they're both corrupted.

As the SanDisk stick came from Ebay, a warranty exchance is sadly out of the question. I will get another one from Amazon and see how it goes from there.

Actually, I got mine from Ebay as well. When it went bad I contacted SanDisk and all I had to do was fax them a copy of the Ebay transaction and a copy of my paypal receipt to get a RMA and prepaid postage.

So if your purchase was for a new memory stick from Ebay you should be able to get it replaced for free.

Didn't know that about Ebay, thanks for the tip.

If the PSP won't recognize either stick it's probably not the sticks. Did you try formatting them using the PSP (under system settings)?

Originally Posted by Samstag

If the PSP won't recognize either stick it's probably not the sticks. Did you try formatting them using the PSP (under system settings)?

Think about what you just said. It would be next to impossible to format the sticks under system settings if the PSP does not see them.

Originally Posted by SoCal

Think about what you just said. It would be next to impossible to format the sticks under system settings if the PSP does not see them.

No, after watching this thread for a while it occurred to me that you're making the assumption that the original poster has tried simple fixes like this. I'm tossing out the idea that the whole problem is either user error or that it's a USB/Windows problem rather than a problem with both memory sticks.

These sticks don't just suddenly become corrupt in an unseable way without physical damage. And to think two sticks from different manufacturers both developed the same problem at the same time for the same user is less than unlikely.

i had the same exact problem and reformatting it with the PSP made it work again its not such a stupid suggestion

Samstag, the SanDisk stick was formatted using the PSP and the Sony stick is unformatted as the PSP won't recognise it.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to a shop and try them with a different PSP so I can see whether it's the sticks that are the problem or the PSP and then try a new memory stick in my PSP to see what happens.