"Ronin" wrote in message
...
Friend has a flash drive that was working OK, but when he plugged it in
yesterday, it didn't show in Explorer. When he plugs it in it makes the
appropriate sounds, but it doesn't appear in Explorer or Disk management.
We uninstalled all of the pertinent entries in Device Manager and tried it
again, and it all reinstalled perfectly, gave notice that it was in
stalled, etc., but in addition to not showing up, there is no "Safely
Remove Hardware" icon, no mention of the device when I force the "safely
remove" dialogue.

Tried it on another machine with the same results, tried another stick on
my friend's machine and it works fine. Is this thing toast? Is there no
utility that can reach into the "drive's" guts and make it come back out
of hiding, or is it irrecoverable corruption?

--
Ronin

USB flash drives have a tendency to suddenly and irretrievably fail.

This is why they are good for conveniently transporting files that you
already have, but should *never* be used as working file storage or as
backup media.

Because of this tendency to fail, I've just stopped using them, and instead
use portable drives that use different technology. An iPod can be a
handy option.

HTH
-pk