Question USB drive disconnecting after displaying contents

[Pennywise024]

To start off, I read through the Lost Data? Recovery thread and it isn’t applicable, at least not yet. I also searched and didn’t see anything like my issue.

The thumb drive in question belongs to my wife and she has a collection of pictures from vacations, weddings, family and such. The thumb drive will connect, show up in the drive list, allow me to open its folder and maybe a sub folder before it disconnects. I have connected it to different computers with the same issue. I have also used other thumb drives in the same port in the same computers with no issues. So I don’t think it’s a driver issue.

In one of the connect attempts I grabbed the first folder and dragged it to the desktop, it copied one short mpeg file before it disconnected. Everything else I’ve tried to pull off the drive gets stuck at about 95% transferred, then disconnects, corrupting the data. I’ve tried it with individual files, grouped files, folders and selecting all to no avail.

I thought about a data recovery program, but if the drive doesn’t stay connected, not sure it will be the fix. I also thought about a clone bay, but the ones I have only accept hard drives and SSDs. Anybody have a similar problem or have some creative ideas on how to get the data off this drive?

 

[JohnBonhamsGhost]

The thumb drive will connect, show up in the drive list, allow me to open its folder and maybe a sub folder before it disconnects. I have connected it to different computers with the same issue. I have also used other thumb drives in the same port in the same computers with no issues.

usually because the drive is having problems staying detected due to issues with it's interface.

i've been through a few thumb drives and random USB cables that have the same problem.
sometimes i would have to physically hold them in place while manipulating data.

you can try different USB ports; maybe with the drive standing upright or a USB port with a bigger cutout so the drive can sit deeper in the port.

 

[LinuxDevice]

Incidentally, if there is some sort of signal quality issue, then sometimes going through a HUB (try with a short cable for HUB-to-PC) can act as a signal adapter. Signaling itself is quite complex and can depend on combinations of components which are otherwise 100% valid and functional. A second issue is if the rail voltages are slightly different from one PC to the next this can cause failures. For that external HUB to test with, if it is externally powered and does not use USB bus power, then this would also bypass power issues by not depending on the USB power. Try an externally/independently powered USB HUB as a test.