Is this USB Thumb drive toasted or is it the USB Port?

Hello;

I found that a 32GB LEXAR USB 3.0 thrumb drive was not being fully recognized by my PC. When using File Manager and clicking on Removable disk (I:) under This PC, I am getting a prompt: Please insert a disk into Removeable Disk (I:). [The volume name used to be shown as EXAR (I:), IIRC.] When I show the hidden icons and attempt to safely eject drive I:, it is not included in the list of removable drives. Physically pulling the USB thumb drive from the USB port, however, does result in an audible system sound being played.

Control Panel | Hardware and Sound | Devices and Printers shows the device as: USB Flash Drive .

When this suspect USB thumb drive is attached to the PC, I experience flashing icons in the task bar and on the desktop (previous thread in the Performance and Maintenance forum) . So, the system apparently was continuously searching for a drive at the USB port.

Is this suspect EXAR USB thumb drive toasted ?

I also wonder if the USB port is damaged?, because another USB (EXAR) thumb drive (one with win10 install files) , when inserted into the same USB port, its internal LED is continuously lit; and when attempting to eject it, I am told that it is continuously in use; so I shutdown the PC before removing that win10 install USB drive . I do have other USB thumb drives available here, and will do further testing with them.

I believe that both the suspect and the win10 install thumb drives are from a package of three EXAR thumb drives. However, the suspect EXAR USB drive does not show any lit up LED, which supports the theory that the device is indeed toasted.

I had the suspect EXAR USB thumb drive physically inserted into the USB port 24/7, and used it as a storage location for manually copying a few important files. I found that it was difficult to slide the movable part in and out; had to work it a few times until it became easier to slide in/out.

Device Manager under Disk Drives Properties and also under Portable Devices (I:) Properties reports: This device is working normally.

Any thoughts/comments on this issue will be appreciated.

Regards,
VinceB.

If you plug it into another PC, does that recognise it and work properly? If so, the USB may not be toast but just mis-recognised by your PC.

To remove the (probably incorrect) drivers from your PC, for each of the misbehaving USBs plug it in, find it in Device Manager and uninstall it. Then remove it and plug it back in. Does it now behave normally?

I have done some additional simple testing here, which I feel has answered my two original questions. My conclusions are:

1. Insertion of several other USB thumb drives into the front-accessible available USB ports: each USB drive device appeared normally in File Manager.
2. The WIN10 install USB thumb drive that was lighting its internal LED continuously is no longer happening; as if the install files had to be registered or indexed by the Windows 10 system.
3. And most importantly, only when the suspect USB Lexar thumb drive was attached to any one of the front-accessible available USB ports, the blinking icons within the taskbar and on the desktop occurred; apparently due to an electrical or mechanical malfunction of the suspect USB Lexar drive. It is my understanding that the icons blinked or flashed because Windows 10 was attempting to index the files located on the suspect USB Lexar thumb drive.

I infer from all of the above that indeed the suspect USB Lexar thumb drive is faulty, no longer useable, and probably will be discarded soon. There is no evidence that any of the available USB ports or any of the other USB thumb drives that I have here are faulty.

When I have access to another Windows computer, I might risk attaching the suspect/faulty USB Lexar thumb drive to determine if the result is some abnormal behavior.
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OT: I have recently connected a Seagate 5 TB Plus Hub USB backup drive, and have configured for backups to be done daily using Seagate's Toolkit app. So, loss of use of the suspect/faulty USB Lexar thumb drive is less important to me now. I am still learning how to make use of the Seagate 5TB hard drive and have several questions in mind; if anyone here knows of a forum for Seagate, please let me know more about its existence, thus far I have not found anything other than the Seagate website.

spunk said:

Seagate has closed their Forum. It now redirects to Seagate Support.
You can post any questions you have about your Seagate drive and we can try and answer them, or direct you to a source that can answer them.

spunk: TNX for replying. I was unclear that Seagate USB drive questions are appropriate here in a W10 Drivers and Hardware forum …. My questions probably are very basic concepts about backup and imaging my W10-64bit Home edition. I will start a different thread in this forum, soon, about Seagate and their Toolkit app usage. First some browsing in this forum.

Regards,
VinceB.