Hi,

I have a USB flash drive which is acting weird lately. No matter which file system I format it to, it seems to get corrupted after I copy some files to it, take it out and plug it in again (sometimes it takes 2-3 plug-out-plug-ins, sometimes only one). I am using Ubuntu 12.04. I tried formatting the drive to NTFS, EXT4, EXT3, FAT and none seems to work. Sometimes it gives errors like this when plugged in:

"Error mounting: mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1"

Or sometimes it does not show any error and shows a corrupted file system in gParted (red exclamation mark).

I also "dd"-ed the entire /dev/sdb and then created a new partition table, but still the same problem.

I always remove the drive "safely".

Is the drive dead (or in coma maybe)? Is there a way to fix it somehow?

By the way, I used to format it a lot before, could it be a problem? Does formatting weaken a USB drive?

Thanks.

formating shouldn't hurt anything on a standard hard drive. But drives do go bad.

yes, that.
sometimes you have to reboot afterwards.
and of course put partitions and file systems on it.
if that doesn't help either - who is to say. same thing with other usb sticks?

Reboot the entire system for a USB drive? O.o
Yeah I did put partitions on it afterwards with gParted.
No, other USB sticks work fine.
I guess it IS dead (or at least close to dead).