Many folks are left pondering this question: Why can’t I see my USB drive or thumb drive?” The biggest issue we see with faulty flash drives are users removing the drives from the port during a write operation. Most operating systems such as Windows, Linux, Unix(Mac), and others warn you about removing flash drives before unmounting. It may not make sense to you why this needs to be done, but if your computer is writing to any device while you unplug it, your run the risk of destroying file tables, formatting, files, and other stuff that you will lose when you “snatch and run”.
Static electricity can also be a potential problem with these drive, so it is a good idea to protect the connectors after removal from the machine to prevent current discharges across the circuit board/chips during transport. Most drives come with a cap to protect the connectors, and some have a slider to move everything inside much like a turtle.
