I bought a new USB flash drive and initially copied files from my laptop to it, then from the drive to my desktop, without any problems. When I later tried copying files from the desktop back to the drive, the transfer failed after running for a while. After that, the drive stopped appearing normally anywhere. It now seems to have a name made up of Chinese characters, doesn't appear in Disk Management, and shows 0 bytes in Command Prompt. I don't need to recover the files, since they were only backup copies—I mainly want to know whether the drive can be fixed or if I should replace it. What should I try next?
3 Answers
This sounds like either a failed drive or a counterfeit one. If the drive no longer appears in Disk Management and reports zero capacity, software repairs probably won’t make it reliable. Return or exchange it rather than trusting it with backups.
I’d stop trying to write to it and contact the seller for an RMA or replacement. Even if it temporarily starts working again, a drive that failed during its first few transfers shouldn’t be used for important data. For the replacement, buy from a reputable seller and verify its full capacity before relying on it.
Test the drive with a utility such as H2testw or ValiDrive. These can reveal whether the flash storage is defective or falsely reporting its capacity. Since it’s new, save the test results and use the warranty or return period if it fails.
The brand, advertised capacity, purchase price, and seller would help determine whether it was likely counterfeit. Extremely cheap high-capacity drives are especially suspicious.