Feb 7, 2010
Two Of My Usb Memory Sticks Have Suddenly Stopped Working
The two memory sticks my wife uses to bring work home on have both stopped working on both our PCs; neither PC recognises that they have even been plugged in. The pins seem to be lying flat. All my memory sticks and other USB devices still work. Are there any common problems which can switch a memory stick off?
Yes removing them before switching them off in the “Safely Remove Hardware”. It will corrupt it or destroy the data on it thus making it unusable.
I had similar problems with my stick, but I was going from PC to MAC and then back again. I couldn’t format on the MAC and then go to PC, but I could format on the PC and go to MAC.
What could be happening is that the leads on the drive could be failing. Not meeting the electrical connection or something of that nature, but if you use this search string, you may find better answers:
flash drives +failures
Failing USB drive
try it on the last computer that recognises it to see if it will work
make sure they were not assigned some sort of security previleges which is preventing them from working
Removing USB drive will still function can damage them, make sure that is not the case
Finally insert the drives again and go to your computer to see if they are there. If you find them there it could help in troubleshooting