USB ThumbDrive Troubles

[Harper]

2005, sold a customer a 512MB USB Thumb Drive.
It was a Leadtek 512Mb USB Thumb Drive with Read Write Protection switch.

Last year, it complains how he can not write to his drive. He brings the drive to me. I look at it. I am having simulare problems too. I send it in for RMA. However i get some RMA guy at my supplier's end telling me that i hand the read write protection turned on.
Now I did know about the read write protection. However there is no marking on this drive saying which is LOCK and UNLOCK.
I get it back, and it's working fine.

A few month later, client has some troubles again. I had advised him to switch the Read Write Protection on and off, and this worked.

January 2007, it turns out that no mater how many times he tries, he can not get Leadtek 512Mb USB Thumb Drive to write any more data. Even though it only 1/2 full.

By now it past it warranty, so I sell him a new 2Gb KOENIG USB pen drive. This one does not have any read write protection. So things should be all right. BTW, I sell a lot of these pen drives and not have one come back.

Today, my client calls me up, and he's having the same problem again.

Now I will be able pass this one under warranty. However I am not telling RMA the history of this guy's last pen drive.

I got a sinking feeling that some thing else is screwing up this guys pen drive. Any suggestions on what could be causing this?

 

[Nitestick]

voltage irregularities fried the write mode of it's chipset?

 

[zep867]

I'd say it probably leads back to an issue with the usb ports directly.

my buddy fried 3 drives through one set of ports. Never has an issue on other machines. Due to it being an intermittant issue, it's hard to track down (and costly) So he just doesnt use that set of ports anymore.

 

[Jorsoft]

Could be the port, very likely he's ripping it out of the port itself frequently instead of doing the "Safely Remove Device" task from the system tray. Encourage him to do that to help preserve his thumb drives.

 

[Zorro]

i had a trouble with my friends USB thumbdrive,, Light wave 512 MB,, i used it in a cafe, where a computer showed an error that its not recognised,, wen i tried it on another USB port on same computer, it was ok. Then after data transfer and all, i took the USB to my friend, where he tried pluggin it into his laptop, but it showed the same error!!! Now whichever computer i try it on, the same error is displayed. It was properly removed !!! Can i get it repaired or wat?? What is the RMA thing harper was talking about??

 

[Nitestick]

Could be the port, very likely he's ripping it out of the port itself frequently instead of doing the "Safely Remove Device" task from the system tray. Encourage him to do that to help preserve his thumb drives.

that only stops the file system/files from being corrupted if the disk has write caching enabled. if it doesn't then you don't even need to use the safely removed device dialogue.