Perceived Death of a Thumb Drive

I purchased a 4GB USB thumb drive two days ago. Working fine on both PCs (the corrupt one - see prior post and the backup).

Suddenly, neither computer can access it. Windows provides a drive letter, but when you try to open it, you get a "Insert disk into Drive E" message.

I formatted it in Computer Management--> Disk Management area, and voila! it works now.

I made the mistake of leaving it in the USB port while reformatting my C drive due to Windows installation. Perhaps the sequence through Windows (I wiped all partitions - perhaps the system saw this one) or the constant restarts. At any rate, at least it works now.