USB Pen Drive Crisis

[Mikko Huhtala]

Gareth Russell writes:
 > My USB Pen drive, has given up the ghost or so it appears. I get the
 > following error when i try to mount it
 > 
 > mount: /dev/sda1 is not a valid block device

Have you updated your kernel by any chance? USB storage support for
some drives is broken in early 2.6 kernels and many 2.4 kernels, too
(mine does not work with stock 2.4.23 but does work with a Fedora
kernel). This is the error you'd get with a buggy kernel. (I have no
idea about recovering data from physically broken USB flash drives,
sorry.)

Mikko