If you don't want to hear the entire story just skip to the end hehe! Well I am new to the Linux thing and decided to start off with Ubuntu. I just finished building a new computer yesterday and popped in the Ubuntu disc and installed it. After the installation was complete I was amazed at how great it looked. Than I put in one of my flash drives, the computer did not detect it. I pop in a second flash drive. This time it worked. So I than eject the second flash drive and plugged it into my other computer (Windows XP) to try to transfer a mp3 and a .doc file. When I plugged it into the Ubuntu computer, it did not detect it! I try plugging it into my other computer and it did not detect it either.


It looks like both of my flash drives are dead! They worked perfectly before but now after plugging it into the Ubuntu PC I don't know what happened. It could have something to do with the computer I built (possibly something went wrong?) but I do not understand what could of caused the death of my flash drives! Please help any ideas are welcomed! Thanks in advance!

Oh yeah I also have no idea how to use Ubuntu so any help there is appreciated as well. When I popped in my Motherboard disc it showed this weird page with folders and the setup couldn't be executed. Yeah complete newb here, help please!

OSes can't really "kill" flash drives to my knowledge. However bad USB ports can. This has happend to me many times. It would'nt hurt to check the polarity of that machines USB ports.

Its very unlikely that ubuntu would have killed usb drive.

Lets check out a few things :

1.How Old is USB drive
2.How often do you use it a day - On How many computers
3.How old is computer.
--
What if you connect some other device - say usb printer etc (I dunno if you are willing enuff to try that) does it work.

All I am trying to do here is to really pinpoint where exactly the problem is.

How would I check the polarity of the USB ports?


1. The USB drive is about a year old and the other one is a few months. It is just unlikely both would die immediately following being plugged into the new PC.
2. It is primarily used between 2 computers and a few times with the PS3.
3. The new PC is just one day old today and my other computer is about a year old.

I don't think I am willing to risk plugging in another device until I get to the bottom of this. Thank you for the suggestion though.

Thanks to both of you for your concern and advice.

If the ports you plugged the drives in to are front ones you had to wire yourself (as opposed to the rear ones that are connected directly to mobo), it is wise to check the manuals of both mobo and case for the pinout assignment. If you didn't have to deal with a bunch of single wires on the pins and instead the case had like a "quick plug" in a block it is possible to have something wrong that can be damaging. The block plugs are made to work on a range of mobos but might not be correct for your particular one.

Although the drives might work initially, they can be damaged. I have had this happen with one of my builds (I always use a cheap joystick to check my home builds - I think it is the wrong voltage on the wrong wire that can kill).

thank you, nishtya, for your very informative post. My case came with no manual and it is most probable that I have the USB wires plugged into the wrong place on the motherboard. I guess I can just avoid using the front USB ports. If I plugged in the speaker wires incorrectly, would hooking up speakers kill them too?

Other possibility I can think off my head as on now - Is it possible that you try a USB friendly distro - say "OpenSuse" 10/10.1/10.2 whatever 32/64 bit version.

And yes - I would have checked USB ports in BIOS - Secondly - If I could see usb ports in BIOS I would have tried running some diagnostics - If that would have helped.

And Again as I was going through Initial Comment - Wires/polarity reverse thing seems unlikely since - It did work briefly - right ? I don't know If devices are supposed to work breifly even though polarity was reversed

1. Hooking up speaker wires in reverse generally doesn't do anything bad except in some instances it won't work at all.

2. This problem really does sound like a badly wired USB port.

3. The parent poster never said that his flash drive worked at all on his Linux machine.

4. If your USB ports are enabled in your BIOS then that is not your problem.

5. It's very easy to plug in the front USB ports on most machines backwards. This will cause exactly the behaviour you have described. (I've done it before )

6. Flash drives have a life span of about 100,000 unique writes to the device, after that you can still read some of them but you can't write to them anymore. This is why one of the posters asked how old the drive was, I'm guessing. I really don't think this is the problem.

7. When I suggested you check the polarity of the USB ports, I really meant to check the way they were wired. I pretty much know that most poeple don't own a USB polarity-checker. (I know I don't. )

8. If you have USB ports that come off the mobo on the back of the computer, generally speaking, you can trust those.

I hope this helps. I'm not trying to sound pedantic, but you'll have to forgive me I'm having a quite a day.

Thank you for all the replies! I have decided to just avoid using the front USB ports and I will give the back ones a try. Just for confirmation: my speakers won't be damaged even if I wired incorrectly correct?

Thanks again!

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usb - you may find other resources as well.

Pin details for USB

1 VBUS (4.4–5.25 V)
2 D−
3 D+
4 ID
5 Ground /shield

And to best of my belief - If polarity was reversed - Device wouldn't have worked at all in the very first place.

And as far as BIOS goes - I wanted to check BIOS after the given incidence - to make sure device functionality was still there.

I am not an electronics guru but know from own experience, a usb device may or may not function a bit when plugged into an incorrectly wired port. I don't think it is a matter of polarity per se but rather as I said before, sending juice of wrong voltage down a line or one that shouldn't have any voltage sent down it.

As for polarity and speakers, again no expert but it isn't it possible for them to work but be out of phase? (cones going out when they should go in, vice versa).

Very few cases have real manuals but often they include a little slip of paper with the usb leads color coded or sometimes they have the wires themselves labeled.

I do know that many people report not being able to boot from flash drives plugged in the front usb ports. Whether this has something to do with many of them being wired wrong, possibly?

Another possible scenario is ESD damage to the drives. They work until they are zapped by a static charge on being unplugged?

speakers will still work but they wont sound the way they should... you can check the polarity of speakers with a 9 volt battery... if the cone moves outwards then u have the correct polarity... excessive use with the wrong polarity can result in blown coils and damaged speakers

Well, did you use different ports when connecting the sticks? That is, first on in front, then back, then front again? Could explain why it worked for some time. Did your Windows machine exhibited some strange behaviour lately? Possibly it could have been caused by some defective parts on the Windows machine. Anyway, this seems really hardware related. Did some strange smell fill the room?

For your second question: you can not execute Windows programms like that (setup). On top, it is completely useless, as Windows drivers won't work. Ubuntu should already have most (all) drivers built-in.

1 VBUS (4.4–5.25 V)
2 D−
3 D+
4 ID
5 Ground /shield

My book lists the above slightly differently :

1 VBUS (4.4–5.25 V)
2 D−
3 D+
4 Ground
5 Ground /shield

In my case I was working on a friend's PC and the USB Ports allegedly did not work , when I plugged a Flash Drive in the front ports , nothing happened , tried the rear ports and the 1st time got a flash from the built-in LED for just a fraction of a second . At that point the Drive was already fried . Did a bit of investigating , went to my PC and checked polarity on USB Port Output ports at front of case , then I went to project PC and found that the " RED " wire which normally is (+)5volts , is actually the (-) side of port ; which would mean the Flash Drive's Ground now became the (-) Data connection which is not made to withstand a 5 volts current; it fried the USB Flash Drives . All I did was use an Ohm Meter and made sure the wires from the leads corresponded to the connecting point at front of case usb connections then connected the wires to Motherboard in the reverse order that it would connect , what should have been Ground Shield became 5volt supply . Front contacts on case or back for that matter , facing port , left (+) 5volts , next is (-) Data , next (+) Data , next is (-) Ground , I left the ground shield unconnected as the connector now is offset slightly on pin connector . If you want you could just pop that connection out of connector and just hook it up seperately .