USB booting :: USB FlashDrive

Greetings-
Installed DSL 2.3 on brand new 256MB USB Flash Drive(cheapo "Simple Flash" from Sam's Club); used USB HDD-Pendrive install as initial install and things were OK for three weeks using bootfloppy from 2.2b install.

Decided to upgrade bootfloppy by downloading "bootfloppy-usb.img" which was dated as 4-10-06 and created new bootfloppy BUT forgot to delete it from ramdisk/home/dsl so of course it would have been saved to the USB upon shutdown, but I can't say for sure because upon the next boot the stick did not flicker like it did before and there was a screen full of "cannot finds" and kernel panic.

Neither DSL nor Windows will recognize the stick. DSL says "no such device or address" & "error mounting USB device" and Windows says "USB device malfunction" & "Windows does not recognize this device".
Is it possible that saving the file killed the stick or what warning signs does a pendrive give before failure?

Long live DSL

It's probably not broken - more likely that the drive has some format or partition error that's preventing it from being read properly.

I had a similar experience with a 256MB USB pendrive where I thought I'd broken it. I fixed it doing a new DSL install on the drive. The script formats & partitions the drive properly & it worked fine again after that.

Worth trying before you bin it anyway!

Thanks Iang- been busy with other things but finally tried and retried every way to access the stick with the USB Pendrive tool and Windows again but the stick never lights up and the error messages are the same.

If the stick is really dead, it still leaves the questions of just how long can we expect a stick to last ( I can't believe my 3 weeks of moderate use is the norm ) and what warning signs, if any, a stick will give before failing. Maybe we have to keep a duplicate stick always updated and ready to go if there are no warning signs.

Thanks again-
Retry3

original here.