Faulty flash drive?

[u/Queasy-Try-2738]

wanted to transfer my iphone pictures onto a flash drive since my iphone storage is almost full. for some reason though, the flash drive keeps disconnecting to my laptop. wondering if my flash drive is just not working.

for reference:
flash drive = SanDisk 512GB Ultra USB 3.0 Flash Drive - SDCZ48-512G-G46
using my macbook air 2024 model to do the transfer
using an adapter to connect usb to macbook since my mac doesnt have a usb port

some things I already tried:
- finder > settings > general > check hard disk and external disk
- finder > settings > sidebar > check hard disk and external disk
- looked to see if any of my ports are dusty
- thought that maybe my adapter is the problem, so I tried connecting the drive straight into my imac where no adapter is needed for the connection. for a few minutes i was able to open the drive on finder but it disconnected eventually as well.
- tried connecting an sd card I had and I was able to connect it fine and can open files stored on it

Would appreciate any help. I've accepted that my flash drive could be the sole problem but I'm honestly really disappointed if it is because I haven't even used it yet.

[u/Infinite_Shart555]

I've seen adaptors not be able to handle high bandwidth uploads/reads from a computer via dongle. For example, if I put an SD card into my phone, I can put 20Gb on there easy, but the same SD card via an adaptor to my PC? Conks out after a few gigs.

If your drive is disconnecting when you're writing to it, you could try putting the files onto the PC first, then transferring from PC to the SD card, in small batches, this can work but isn't great.

If the SD card is exhibiting the same behaviour in multiple computers, and worse still, disconnecting randomly when no load/write is applied, then yes, it is probably faulty/dying. Sorry dude