thanks. i've tried it on several different computers, running linux and windows and it isnt recognized, so i guess it's dead. dad always safely dismounted(cant remember what windows called it) it so i guess it was just a cheap piece of hardware. i had thought that not unmounting or safely disconnecting a jump drive was just to stop the OS from crashing because it cant find the device, i didnt think it had any effect on the thumb drive itself. i've been unsafely removing my thumb drives forever and none of them have died yet, linux and windows have freaked out a few times though.