The same exact symptoms happened to me suddenly with the USB drive that shipped with BB2008.

I carefully opened the USB case using s tiny jewler's screwdriver to push in the little lockpins on either side, unhooked the connection to the actual laptop drive inside and then re-attached it. Reassembled the case and the thing has been doing fine ever since.

I think the internal connection to the drive had come a little loose in shipping.

The reason I did the disconnect/reconnect rather than just push it back on was to make sure that all the contacts were aligned properly and also because the mechanical action of removing and re-inserting would wipe any possible dirt or corrosion off of the pins.

That was back at the beginning of 2009 and that USB drive has functioned first time every time ever since.


--Mac