Malfunctioning USB drive

[The Raven]

How do you feel when you have data on 256GB USB drive and over night it says it can't work, you must format the drive, and all of your data is gone. How you deal with that? Yesterday my USB drive did the same thing I just described and I got so upset. I was downloading many movies, tv series, games, programs... All of that GONE. I tried using RUFUS to format it and they show me some error.

I really don't know what to do, right now USB drive is useless.

 

[Mendalla]

You have my sympathies. Fixing a USB drive is a bit out of my wheelhouse. Is this a thumb drive or a USB hard drive? If the latter, is the cable replaceable? Because the cable is often the problem with I/O errors on an external device. But if it is a thumb drive? Yeah, you're probably SOL.

Even stuff on a USB drive needs to be backed up if you plan to keep it long haul. We have a 1TB USB hard drive but use it mainly to back up stuff on my wife's PC, not to store stuff. There's a folder of media, mostly movies, that's not backed up anywhere but I wouldn't cry if I lost it.

(And our most valuable files, our family home videos and photos, get backed up to the cloud as well as the USB drive)

 

[DrLeftover]

This happens a lot more than it should.

With windows. Shut the computer down cold, power OFF. Let the damned thing sit dead and dark for awhile.

Then power it up and see if it wants to update drivers and what not.