Just the other day I plugged in my USB pen drive to my work computer so that I could connect remotely to my server at home. To my surprise, it didn’t identify itself as a “ToughDrive” or pop up an Explorer window with its contents. Instead, it told me that I had plugged in a “USB MEMORY KEY” and that the media was unformatted.

In a state of momentary confusion, I thought that it had something to do with it having gone through the washing machine the week before. I wrote to ATP to ask what I should do with it. It was only when I got home from work that night that I was reminded that it hadn’t been my USB key that had gone through the wash but my space pen. (Which survived the experience just fine.) I haven’t heard back from ATP yet but, even if I do, it might be to be told that they don’t guarantee their ToughDrives will survive such a thing. I somehow doubt that an follow-up, “Oh, no, my mistake. I didn’t run it through the wash after all – it just stopped working for no apparent reason,” will sit well with them. I’ll likely have buggered up any chance I have of getting it fixed if that sequence of events were to happen.

This is now the second USB device I’ve owned that’s just “suddenly” stopped working for no apparent reason. My first one was from SanDisk. It, too, one day just refused to be recognized. I have no idea what’s going on here. The good news is that I did manage to get it recognized at home briefly and back up its contents. That bad news is that I haven’t got it to be recognized consistently since – although my home computer, while doing so erratically, does seem to do better at it then my work computer (which hasn’t recognized it since yesterday at all).

If I buy a third such device and it too mysteriously fails after several months, I think I’ll be taking myself to some lab to be tested for unusual electromagnetic emissions…