USB thumb drive inaccessible

Jahzara

Baseband Member
Messages
49
I was accessing my usb thumb drive just fine then suddenly it stopped. I'd put it in but the auto prompt screen would not come up. I'd go to "My computer" and it wouldn't show up for a while and when it finally did and I'd click on it, it would just stay stuck in "loading" mode. It actually crashed window's explorer at one point.

What's going on?
 
How old is the drive?

Open the Disk Management snap-in in the management console and see if the drive shows up there.
 
The drive is two years old and was working just fine, within an hour of this occurring. It does in fact show up in the disk management console. If I try to disable or uninstall or do anything with the drive, the window's explorer screen attempting to access it just freezes.
 
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I'm not worried about the files on it, I was actually going to delete them anyways. But I downloaded that program to see what would happen when I tried to scan the usb drive and it also just froze. It stays stuck in the "loading" portion of the program, same as it does when I try to click or even right-click it from windows explorer..
 
Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to do so, however I've tried another usb drive and it works just fine.
 
Thumb drives do wear out. As it ages through use, memory locations will fail. When enough fail the computer will have problems reading and writing to and from the drive. Also the contacts will wear out over time.

It's not designed to last forever. I've found with normal use it lasts a year or two. Heavy usage will shorten that life span.

My recommendation is to let it meet its fate on a rock smashed up good with a hammer and get a new one. Something else to keep in mind is the chips used in thumb drives have much to do with how it performs and how long it will last. Real cheap off brand drives are made with cheap chips or fell on the floor rejects and will turn out to be money wasted.

Stick with the major players in the world of thumb drives. I use PNY myself. I've had 2 last 3 years before giving me any trouble. They have since met their fate under a hammer as they had proprietary information on them. PNY and other top brands may cost a buck or two more than other low end brands but it's money wisely invested.
 
I booted my computer through linux and was able to access the drive just fine.. Still doesn't work right on my computer and I tried it on another computer finally and it didn't work on that PC either. Tried it in my car as well - didn't work. But with Linux, it did.
 
Find Device Manager under Control Panel. I am guessing you now see one of the USB interfaces with a yellow (IIRC...) question mark next to it.

That's probably your thumb drive. Remove that entry, and see if it works.
 
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