Ever have a flash drive just stop even registering its existence when plugged in?

Factual Questions
1

I have a (pretty old) flash drive I just rediscovered. I know it worked a few years ago. I can’t remember exactly what’s on it, but it can’t be too important since I’ve gone without it for years.

Was hoping to find out what was on there though. But when I plug it into a computer (any computer) the computer doesn’t even recognize that anything has happened. It doesn’t notice anything has been plugged in at all, much less simply failing to be able to read the thing.

Ever encountered something like that? Any good news to be had here or is it well and truly and irrevocably dead?

2

Should note–no amount of light pressing or jiggling or anything seems to make anything happen… so if it’s a mechanical issue, it’s seriously just completely disconnected somewhere in there.

3

Probably dead, might be worth checking in another connector on another machine.

4

Yeah, it’s happened to me.

An old flash drive stopped registering as a recognizable USB device of any type. Windows just treats it as an unknown USB device with garbage device identification.

I don’t know if the actual flash contents are trashed, but at a minimum the USB controller (and maybe the flash controller, especially if they’re the same thing) are whacked.

Nothing life-shaking on there. Some old files; anything I need within the last 1/2 decade are either on the flash drive which succeeded that one, or on an Android phone.

5

I’ll join the crowd. I also had one go almost completely non-responsive a few years ago. Too long ago for me to remember the exact symptoms, but Windows XP could “see” it so the connector wasn’t broken or anything like that, but it was not recognized as a removable disk (IF I remember correctly, it looked like one when I looked at what was mounted, but if I double clicked it it would always ask me to “please insert a disk”)

6

I still have one with a very strange variation on this behavior: The first time you plug it into a computer, nothing happens - no recognition at all. Pull it out, plug it back in… now it loads normally. In fact, every odd numbered attempt to load the drive fails and every even numbered attempt succeeds. That’s too predictable to be a loose hardware connection, but I’m not sure what it is.

I keep it around as a way to move files from a client’s computer to mine, so it serves a function. Files are never on it for more than five minutes, so I can’t lose anything important.

7

Yes it happened to me.

I got it to work a few more times, then it died again and I could never get any computer to acknowledge its existence.

8

I keep a handful in my briefcase. They last a couple of years then one day-nothing. I consider flashdrives temporary storage.

9

Which drive you are using?

10

Same here. I’ll use them to take files from one place to another but don’t trust them for longterm storage.

I assume the formats have changed over the years. USBs have gone through a couple of iterations too.

11

Yeah and several MP3 players too.