Protecting pen drives from damage

[akjain84]

Hi,

I recently plugged a pen drive in my friends' computer (in his absence) - the PC did not detect and later the pen drive did not detect on even my PC or any other PC. (It had nothing to do with driver letter not assigned or some similar OS related problem as the pen drive didn't detect on the PCs where it was previously detecting)

So probably it burned or damaged. My doubt is that the the USB port was faulty and may be it was delivering insufficient power supply (more or less)

But I was lucky that I got it replaced under warranty (may be the damage was less).

Pen drives are pretty cheap but the same could happen with an external USB HDD also. So in future to prevent this from happening again and to avoid any major burn/damage

Is there any way (software/tool) to detect faulty USB ports before plugging the pen drive, especially at unknown PCs like cyber cafe etc.


Thanks in advance.
Arun

 

[gracefully]

I doubt it. USB Ports have fuses, and if one device somehow trips the fuse, then that USB port is toast. However, the rest of the USB ports will function normally. Giving less voltage or less current is less likely to damage the pen drive than sudden bursts of high voltage/high current. Besides, pen drives don't even need so much power.

 

[akjain84]

@gracefully

So you mean there is no need to check or doubt a USB port as there is no chance of any damage to pen drives from the port itself (or its power supply).


Then it still remains a question that how my pen drive became dysfunctional after plugging into a different PC.

Thanks
-Arun

 

[gracefully]

I'm thinking that your pen drive shorted itself out, or something like that. It's more likely that the USB device failed, rather than the USB port. Is the pen drive made by a known manufacturer? Like Kingston, Transcend, etc.? I buy my pen drives from well-known manufacturers only.

If ever the USB port failed, you would notice it immediately. Smoke, or a quick flash, probably the PC shutting itself off are probable indicators of a port failure.

 

[dj1001]

i know once we shorted out a usb prot on an old dell just to see what would happen and it imediatly cut power to the port and a pop-up came on screen say usb port1 has experienced a failure and power will be cut untill the next start up or something along those lines

 

[akjain84]

@gracefully Yes, it was a Kingston 2 GB data traveler. And this failure happened after 1 year from the purchased date.

 

[siddharthat]

I have a same bitter experience with my sandisk cruzer micro 2gb after plugging it into my friend's PC. The only thing worse is that it didn't get replaced by warranty. Is there anyway i can get it back to life.

 

[huntluck]

may be you should try some other pc

and change the port and remove every usb connected devices wen u connect it