Why don't two of my flash drives work?

MaloK said:

This report only shows specs of the drive, try to verify them thoroughly with one of the following torture tools.

5 Free Tools to Check and Test USB Flash Drives • Raymond.CC

I personally like Check Flash very much...

If they looses it again, trash' em, there are some of these that are simply "not good"...

It try to always buy them from their original store and something with at least 5 years of warranty.

I downloaded Check Flash and it "sees" both flash drives, both of which are in separate USB ports directly in the laptop but it says: <NOT FORMATTED OR NO MEDIA> for both drives. When I click on the Start! button and then say Yes when it warns that it will erase all the data, I immediately get this in the report window: File or device error: The device is not ready

The exact same thing happened for the second drive as well. Meanwhile, a borrowed flash drive (of a different brand, Lexar) works fine in my laptop. Is this now a conclusive proof that both of my flash drives are broken and not fixable?

Are they doing the same when you connect them on another computer ?

RhinoCan said:

I downloaded Check Flash and it "sees" both flash drives, both of which are in separate USB ports directly in the laptop but it says: <NOT FORMATTED OR NO MEDIA> for both drives. When I click on the Start! button and then say Yes when it warns that it will erase all the data, I immediately get this in the report window: File or device error: The device is not ready

The exact same thing happened for the second drive as well. Meanwhile, a borrowed flash drive (of a different brand, Lexar) works fine in my laptop. Is this now a conclusive proof that both of my flash drives are broken and not fixable?

Maybe you should take them to a professional computer repair store and get another opinion. Of course it will cost you 3x as much as new flash drives would. Just like all the time you spent on this was probably worth several times what it would cost to just get new flash drives.

No need for "Experts"

If you are able to use another computer to perform the same "Check Flash" test and it reports "The device is not ready"

Start digging two little holes.

MaloK said:

No need for "Experts"

If you are able to use another computer to perform the same "Check Flash" test and it reports "The device is not ready"

Start digging two little holes.

Don't do that. The drives won't decay very rapidly.

One of the two drives, Flash 4, actually worked momentarily as I was trying things out: it *didn't* ask me for a disk and let me copy a couple of files onto it. However, when I tried to read those files on my other laptop, it didn't even see the drive.

I am getting the very strong impression that these drives are both toast and are beyond fixing. Therefore, I am abandoning this effort and will buy a couple of new flash drives. I will look for something that is *not* from China and that has a five year or greater warranty.

Thank you all for your help. I'm marking the thread as solved and will be "thanking" the most helpful of you in a few moments.

Try this if you haven't, unless you are here to just entertain us and yourself like user f23948

5 Free Tools to Check and Test USB Flash Drives • Raymond.CC

5 Tools to Test and Detect Fake or Counterfeit USB Flash Drives • Raymond.CC

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One last question: in your first post you mentioned that the sticks are USB 3.0

Question: are your ports on your computers 3.0 or are they 2.0?

I was able to re-create your issue with one of my working mem sticks by plugging at 3.0 stick in a 2.0 port of an older laptop business financing the jeweled and effing around a little with it.
While I know that there should be backward compatibility, commonly referred to as a USB 3.0 being backward-compatible downstream. I doubted that the other way around a 2.0 port can handle at 3.0 as this would be an upstream compatibility.
Then again, aside from defective and sticks it could be a compatibility quirk in your computers hardware.

Have you tried the sticks on any other computer which is not yours, i.e. friend, relatives, employer, job site etc.?

Just a thought, let us know.

dorcom said:

Try this if you haven't, unless you are here to just entertain us and yourself like user f23948

5 Free Tools to Check and Test USB Flash Drives • Raymond.CC

5 Tools to Test and Detect Fake or Counterfeit USB Flash Drives • Raymond.CC

- - - Updated - - -

One last question: in your first post you mentioned that the sticks are USB 3.0

Question: are your ports on your computers 3.0 or are they 2.0?

I was able to re-create your issue with one of my working mem sticks by plugging at 3.0 stick in a 2.0 port of an older laptop business financing the jeweled and effing around a little with it.
While I know that there should be backward compatibility, commonly referred to as a USB 3.0 being backward-compatible downstream. I doubted that the other way around a 2.0 port can handle at 3.0 as this would be an upstream compatibility.
Then again, aside from defective and sticks it could be a compatibility quirk in your computers hardware.

Have you tried the sticks on any other computer which is not yours, i.e. friend, relatives, employer, job site etc.?

Just a thought, let us know.

I've tried the flash drives on two different laptops, a Dell and an ASUS, both running Windows 10 Home 21H2. Most of what I've done is on the Dell and I think all of its USB ports are 2.0 because I see only black in the plastic bit in the port; as I understand it, the plastic bit in USB 3.0 ports is blue. The ASUS has a mix of USB 2.0 and 3.0 ports and I've tried both flash drives in the USB 3.0 ports.

I just tried both flash drives in the USB 3.0 port of a desktop computer that is not mine. Neither flash drive even made an appearance in File Explorer; I did not get the sound sequence that normally comes up when you put it in the computer either.

I'm assuming that means the flash drives are toast but please correct me if I'm wrong!

On my laptops Ports are grey or black and the controller reports to be 3.2gen1 on one and gen2 on the other.

Your drives are defective, that is for sure...

I got Five Sandisk Ultra gen1 last week from WesternDigital.com and ChipGenius reported them all as authentic.

Two days ago, I got SanDisk Ultra Flair, possibly a fake product.