Flash Drive No Longer Recognized

Thanks Eric but it appears the flash drive is a dud. I took it to work and plugged it into my WIN7 laptop. The disk mounted but when I double clicked on the icon Windows asked me to insert the disc. I clicked on 'properties' and there is 0 bytes space remaining. Something is really hosed up with the PNY drive. The tech guy from PNY replied to my email and just told me to return it to the store of purchase and get another one.

FWIW, I've never had any luck with any PNY product to play nice with a Mac; I'd try to return it and get a different brand.

Same problem. I'm not happy with PNY.

I bought a HP w702 128GB flash drive which is really a PNY 128GB flash drive.

I tried it. It worked fine when I first tried it. I couple of weeks later I tried it again and it wasn't recognized by the system at all. As if I hadn't plugged anything in. I tried 3 different Macs and a Windows machine and none of them showed any signs of the flash drive. I started an awful RMA process with PNY. First, the drive says HP but HP has no record of it and their support is useless. Figured out its really PNY and it is listed on the PNY website. I did their online form requesting an RMA and no one ever responded. I called but the automated system didn't offer a way to get an RMA. It didn't say but it turns out they're only open business hours. Eventually called back and was able to get an RMA. They required me to send them the dirt cheap flash drive back at my expense.

I just received the replacement today. Again it initially worked fine, but not it either isn't recognized at all, or after repeated attempts might mount, but then after some use it suddenly ejects unexpectedly.

I am no longer able to use it reliably if at all.

Is this a firmware problem? USB protocol incompatibility with OS X? Or are PNY drive defective by default.

I had a similar problem with a 64GB PNY flash drive a year ago. They sent me a replacement which has worked flawlessly since then.

You are welcome.

Add me to the list who bought a PNY 128GB and it conked out after about an hour of use. I will try to return it to Amazon and notify them of multiple issues.

Hello All,

I work in Desktop Support & Lab Services. I have several of these PNY flash drives in the 'grey' encasements. I have from 64GB to the 256GB. I've noticed that different ones will have issue with not being recognized. They all work on Mac OS X 10.6.8 & 10.8.5.....BUT...on Mac OS X 10.7, 10.9 & 10.10 these flash drives will not mount 'UNLESS' you connect it through the Apple USB keyboard. Wild I know but this is the only way I've been able to make these issues workaround. Another wild thing is I have a MacBook Pro 15" Retina 2012(Mac OS X 10.9.5) and one of the PNY 256GB drives mounted immediately...I got into it in the Finder and started navigating...about say....30 seconds into this and it 'disappears'...never to mount again. >:-| Oh man...I about lost it! I can't seem to figure if this is a sign of the 'Mac OS' or the 'PNY drive'. This one is hard to diagnose. What I'm going to try is this: Mount it on Mac OS X 10.6.8...reformat the PNY drive as say FAT32. Then, if it mounts on 10.9...or 10.10...reformat as Mac OS X Journaled... The trick here is will it mount in 10.9 or 10.10 after being reformatted as FAT32 in 10.6.8? We'll see.

Why not just buy a different brand. In my house, PNY has never played well with any Mac - the brand is on my do-not-buy list.

Similar problem too.

I am rebuilding a Macbook air 2.1 (new SSD) but before I remove the old drive I need to make sure I can boot off of a usb thumb drive (this MBA only has one USB port and one monitor lightning port, thats it) I bought a ADATA C009 32Gb USB thumb drive for this. I formatted the drive, Mac, Journaled, and GUID partition on another one of my macs. When I plugged it into the MBA for the first few times, It mounted on the desktop, appeared in the sidebar, and all volumes in disc utility. Then all of a sudden it stopped reading the disc anywhere, not even in the system profiler. The drive works in all my other macs, (Mac Pro 5.1 and macbook pro 4.1) even after it stopped working in the MBA. I reformatted, re partitioned, etc to no avail. Now Im thinking its the MacAir port thats the problem, but several other USB drives I own, both AC powered and bus powered, work. SO its not the port and its not the drive per se, but the compatibility. Also not Mavericks cause the drive works on my MacPro which is running 10.9.5. Id say Wanttogobacktopc's first assessment was right in that the cheaper slower drives dont always work and its a hit or miss with these types of drives. I really need to find one that works because without a firewire connection there is no other way that I know of (somebody knows) to get an operating system onto a bare drive in the MacBook air

I had the same problem. I used this firmware upgrade tool from PNY and now I can access my drive:

https://www.pny.com/File%20Library/Support/PNY%20Products/Downloads/Firmware-Upg rade-Tool-V2-1-8-14_PNY.exe

Your drive is not a dud, I used to believe mine was dud too. PNY just messed up the firmware on it, the idiots.

I called PNY technical support. If you provide proof of purchase they will send you a new one (with the updated firmware).

Or...

If you have a Windows PC, you can use the firmware update tool and that will bring your flash drive to life again.