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I recently replaced the Windows OS on my old ASUS S200E Laptop with Ubuntu 18.04. I installed Ubuntu using a flash drive. after installation Ubuntu worked perfectly and so did the flash drive, which I had since used for other things again. This was about a year ago.

Today, for the first time since installing Ubuntu on this machine, I had to use a flash drive on this Ubuntu laptop. I was trying to transfer some very large files from my windows machine. Plugged the flash drive into this Ubuntu laptop and .....nothing. It is not picking/reading up the flash drive. I tried a few different ports, I tried finding it via terminal.... nothing, no sign of it.It is as if i have nothing plugged in.

Confused, I took this flash drive back to my windows machine.Now same thing there, no sign of a flash drive, windows is not reading it.

I thought perhaps the flash drive just coincidentally gave up on me,so I brought out another one, plugged it into the windows machine, it works, I put the files in question onto the flash drive then plugged the flash drive into my Ubuntu machine and.......... same as before, there is no sign of a flash drive even existing. Transferred it back to windows machine and here also, there is no sign of the flash drive.........

So what is happening... I do not know. Somehow Ubuntu is killing my flash drives, or at least rendering them undetectable. I am now too scared to plug any further flash drives into my Ubuntu machine.

Has anyone had similar issues and have any idea how to fix it...

super greatfull for ideas on how to fix the flash drive killing issue with my ubuntu laptop.

TY.

kawakawa
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  • PS......... I now have a flash dirve with some important data on it that I cannot open. Fortunately I have the data backed up... Unfortunately the backup is on my work computer which I cannot access for the next few weeks/months thanks to a covid outbreak... If anyone has an idea how to fix an unreadable flash drive please let me know. – kawakawa Jun 11 '21 at 05:35
  • My experience is that Ubuntu is treating USB drives well. I think you have another problem. 1. Either it was damaged when Windows wrote those huge files to them. You could try again, that time replug the drive into the Windows computer; 2. Or the computer hardware (of the Ubuntu computer) is killing the drives. - You can analyze the problematic USB drives according to this link, and if you are lucky, make the drives working again (but probably lose the data on them). – sudodus Jun 11 '21 at 06:02
  • I think you know about safe removal of USB drives, but I ask anyway: Do you flush the buffers [and/or unmount the mounted partitions] before you unplug the drives? Otherwise you can make the file systems corrupted both in Windows and Ubuntu. – sudodus Jun 11 '21 at 07:03
  • In a drive with a corrupted file system it may be possible to identify the file system with TestDisk and identify data (but not directories and file names) with PhotoRec from CGSecurity, – sudodus Jun 11 '21 at 07:07
  • What file system is the USB? I understand that Microsoft's exFAT does not work with 18.04. perhaps install the exFAT utilities if required: sudo apt install exfat-fuse exfat-utils from universe. – C.S.Cameron Jun 11 '21 at 08:26

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