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I was making a Windows 10 copy on my usb stick, the creation tool finished and I disconnected the drive from pc. Then I connected it to second pc, booted it from the stick, and nothing. I go back to the first pc to look if the drive was okay, connected it and... Nothing. The computer didn't even recognize the stick (the second one did, just nothing happened). What do I do? How to recover the flash drive?

VyrCZ
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Yes, they're really easy to damage, permanently. Pulling one out in the middle of a write operation/when it's flushing cache is a sure way to kill it. it's one of those things you get away with 99 times out of 100… but that 100th means you have a dead drive.

Always use the 'Eject' structure on your OS & wait until it shows as unmounted before physically disconnecting.

Tetsujin
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You should always properly eject a USB drive in Windows or set the drive to Quick Removal. Failing to do so can result in data loss due to the cache not being written to the disk.

As for complete drive failure, there is definitely anecdotal evidence out there that this does happen. However, I have never seen it happen. Electrically, I do not understand why it would destroy the drive. An electrical engineer might have better input.

If the drive is no longer recognized in any device as a disk, then the drive is dead. Data could be recovered by a data recovery specialist.

Keltari
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  • Write error will cause a firmware lock, sometimes just dead. I honestly don't know the true mechanics of it, but I've sufficient anecdotal evidence to back a generic "yes you can kill them if you pull them at the wrong time". I used to get through literally thousands of these things for work, so I've seen every combination of "action" = "dead", without ever properly documenting them. Their value to us wasn't enough to warrant our own time in research. if we had a bad batch, we'd ship them back to China for analysis, otherwise in the bin, next. ;) – Tetsujin Dec 30 '21 at 12:37
  • I still have several ziplocks full of them - couple of hundred or so, so I'm still really cavalier with how I treat them ;) I don't ever eject properly - but they never contain anything valuable. – Tetsujin Dec 30 '21 at 12:40
  • @Tetsujin A firmware lock? So in *theory* sending a voltage to a pin on the IC might reset the lock? assuming there is a reset. – Keltari Dec 30 '21 at 12:41
  • There's a QA on here somewhere about resetting it - but I think it's well beyond consumer level. Needs access to the firmware itself. It's not something I've ever personally investigated, as I just discard them like old toffee wrappers. – Tetsujin Dec 30 '21 at 12:42
  • There's info on https://superuser.com/questions/1125282/what-can-i-do-if-my-usb-flash-drive-is-write-protected-or-read-only and https://superuser.com/questions/871850/usb-flash-drive-not-working-or-is-appearing-as-an-empty-disk-drive-disk-managem/871851#871851 but I've never investigated. – Tetsujin Dec 30 '21 at 12:45
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USB sticks just die sometimes. I have used them to make a bootable install USB or repair disk. I also use them to back up data. Some are fine for years some die quickly and not always because I bought the device cheap but that is much more likely.

Often windows 10 will repair them when other windows or Linux won't, I had one recover after being locked for years with Windows 10. Also formating them exFat is likely to make them last longer than using a Linux partition I read, also do not run defragment on them. If you have a Linux installed do not include a swap partition, I read.

Despite the warning, I often set the cache on but always ensure that I use eject. One cheap USB stick that I have only works if I write one file at a time, that is fine I can do that.

Andrew Lohmann
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