Faulty USB?

[Wills]

Yesterday, I was transferring my files from my USB flash drive to my pc. In the middle of the process, my pc froze up. It stayed lagged for a few minutes so I decided to shutdown and restart. After the restart, my pc can’t read the usb anymore. Therefore, I can’t open the USB and format. What do you think is the problem? How do I fix this? Can I still salvage the files from my USB? Please help.

[Dizzy]

Why don’t you try going to device manager. Click “Control Panel”, you should see there your USB. Uninstall it. Plug it back and see if your pc’s recognizing it. You can also right-click on “My Computer”. Choose “Manage”. Then, go to “Disk Management” and see also if your USB shows up there. If you have tried both steps and your pc is not reading your USB, it’s busted. Sometimes, interruptions, glitches and untimely shutdown can cause damage to your USB flash drive. I strongly suggest that you always make back-ups on your files and folders with another USB, this time, a much larger external hard drive.

[Einstein]

From the way I understand your statement Wills is that you did not remove the USB while you were restarting your PC. Sometimes, you just need to remove it, restart the PC, and then put the USB back on because the system will automatically read it.

Before you will conclude that the USB is busted, you may want to try putting the USB in another PC and see if it can be read because if this is the case then Dizzy's solution is the best choice!

[Alchemist]

I have come across a site that can possibly retrieve data on a corrupted USB.

What is USB flash drive technology? Recover files from USB flash drive - Data Recovery Service

Hope this helps!