I have two pen drives.
One is called Transcend Jetflash which could not be accessed by Mandriva 10.1, Debian Sarge and most Linux of that era and older, but it sometimes could be seen by Mandriva 10.2 and any Linux OS newer than that. But every now and then it disappears from the Linux OSs. The cure would be to boot into Windows (as Windows could always read it) and back up any data and re-format it. Then it would be visible again for a little while by most Linux, but would eventually disappear again and required another format job.
The only difference though, is that when it disappears, nothing shows up when it's plugged in, no error, nothing saying it cannot be mounted, nothing!
My Sandisk Cruiser never had this issue with any Linux OS.