If you remove a USB drive while data are still being written to it, you may end up corrupting the drive and it becomes unusable. The device shows up as “XXXXXXXX U167CONTROLLER USB Device” in Device Manager when plugged in. The device LED light just blinks forever and Windows cannot recognize it properly as a mass storage device. If this happens to you, the following little utility may help you reclaim the drive (but not the data though).

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?2kpxnoep835dak4

If you are on Windows Vista, 7 or 8, set the compatibility mode to Windows XP SP2 and run as administrator.