[SOLVED] Failing USB Flash Drives.

[kccollinz]

A few days ago I had a Cruzer 8GB flash drive suddenly stopped working (tried on my MBP OSX 10.7.5 & with Windows 7) & although it shows up in disk utility it would not show up on the desktop. I tried erasing & partitioning, but all the options are greyed out & basically I cannot do anything to it. Even though it showed that I had 8GB left I could not copy anything to it either.

3-4 days later & a new hardly used 16GB flash drive suddenly says it needs to be initialized. I had used it 20 or so times before with no problem. I tried initializing & partitioning the disk in disk utility & get, Partition[Erase] failed with the error: Unable to write to the last block of the device.

Both disks were MS-DOS FAT formatted, as have been all my other disks I have used for years & never had a problem with, until now.

What is happening? Why are all my disks suddenly failing? Fortunately the few files I had on the disks were of no consequence, but I am terrified that my back up disk is going to be next. HELP!

 

[kenrivers]

Is it possible through Disk Utilities to verify the USB drive? Do you have an option to verify/repair the USB drives?

 

[kccollinz]

Is it possible through Disk Utilities to verify the USB drive? Do you have an option to verify/repair the USB drives?

That is the only option that isn't greyed out. It starts to verify, then says it needs to be repaired, but unfortunately it will not (all options greyed out).

Thanks for the reply!

 

[kenrivers]

Are you able to test the drives on another computer? This would be to eliminate the possibility that the drives are the problem. Have you checked read and write permissions on the drives to make sure nothing has changed?

 

[kccollinz]

Are you able to test the drives on another computer? This would be to eliminate the possibility that the drives are the problem. Have you checked read and write permissions on the drives to make sure nothing has changed?

Something must be wrong with the USB hub the drives were plugged in to. Now my newish wireless keyboard just took a dump on me for no reason. The hub is the common denominator to otherwise perfectly good items.

Looks like I will have to toss the hub as well as the flash drives. Good thing there was no important items lost & the hardware is cheap enough to replace.

Strange enough the permissions had changed on one drive to read only, but not the other. Not quite sure how that happened.

Anyway, thanks so much for your responses. First time something like this has ever happened.

 

[kenrivers]

Glad to help but sorry I couldn't offer anything really useful. Didn't realize it was a USB hub. Glad you won't be losing anything important. Since you're going to toss them it couldn't hurt to try them on another computer just to see if you are able to get anything back.