USB flash drive continuously disconnecting and reconnecting.

[cephelotron]

Hi, I have a Lexar USB flash drive that is stuck in a disconnect/reconnect loop. The problem started when the user set an image on the drive to be the desktop background in Win 10, then removed the drive without ejecting it properly.
On Win 10 when inserted a "Please insert media into drive [letter]" prompt continuously pops up about once every second. On Win 7 a "You need to format" prompt launches at the same rate. Mac & Ubuntu Linux system crashes when connected.
I'm unable to run a format as the drive does not register as connected long enough to interact with anything.
There is important data on the drive that the user must have recovered, so an RMA replacement isn't an option. Thanks for any insight or assistance you may be able to provide.

 

[mjslakeridge]

I had a USB flash drive that stopped being recognized all at once. Did some digging around and found a solution that worked. With the drive inserted into a usb port, press down on the end of it with your finger, not too hard to break it, but let it bend down 1 or 2 degrees. Sometimes the contacts on the flash drive start to "go bad" and applying this pressure allows them to make proper contact with the usb port.

When this happened to me, after pressing down on the usb drive, it was recognized. While continuing to press down on the end of it, I quickly drug the contents over to my desktop, while holding constant pressure on the drive.

 

[cephelotron]

I had a USB flash drive that stopped being recognized all at once. Did some digging around and found a solution that worked. With the drive inserted into a usb port, press down on the end of it with your finger, not too hard to break it, but let it bend down 1 or 2 degrees. Sometimes the contacts on the flash drive start to "go bad" and applying this pressure allows them to make proper contact with the usb port.

When this happened to me, after pressing down on the usb drive, it was recognized. While continuing to press down on the end of it, I quickly drug the contents over to my desktop, while holding constant pressure on the drive.

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried this but no luck. It seems like there is some internal switch on the flash drive that got confused by the improper removal that is continuously giving a disconnect instruction that is immediately counteracted by the connect signal from it being plugged in. It goes through the connect disconnect cycle about 3 times per second.

 

[mjslakeridge]

I assume you have tried the flash drive on multiple USB ports or different computers?

 

[cephelotron]

I assume you have tried the flash drive on multiple USB ports or different computers?

Yep, tried on Win 10, Win 7, Mac, & Linux across 4 different machines. Mac & Linux just crashed outright when it was connected.

 

[mjslakeridge]

Your problem is slightly different than mine was. Mine simply wasn't recognized at all, so you are probably right about something "internal" to the flash drive in your case.