Could water damage cause USB flash drive to jumble text?

Question

I have a 1 GB LG USB flash drive that was in my pants pocket and was washed in the clothes washer.

It seems to function properly. The indicator light flashes like it’s supposed to and I can move, copy, etc to and from the drive.

I have a few hundred typed text documents made with Word 2007 that is the only thing on the flash drive right now.

What I have noticed, is that when I re-open an edited and saved document, random words are misspelled, again or newly misspelled words appear, but not by me.

Could it be the flash drive or Word that could be causing this issue?

Answer 1

Washing will not cause this kind of behavior. Water damage will either destroy the drive, or not. There really isn't any partial working status, save having a few bad sectors, but that wouldn't cause the type of error you're facing.

This sounds most like the Microsoft Word version control feature. Because Word is designed for collaboration in the business workplace, it has features to help people manage edits made to a document by different people. If you're working from two different computers, that may be the cause of your problem. Edits being made on one computer, are not approved when you go to the other.

Unfortunately I don't have a copy of Word handy, so I can't test this, but the linked guide should work for enabling and disabling it. Make sure it is turned off on all computers you use.

Answer 2

I don't know if it could jumble text, but it could mess it up really bad.  You probably shouldn't put it into your computer unless you take it down to Best Buy and have their geeks check it out.

Answer 3

This was not caused by the water.  Data on disks has sophisticated detection of accidental data change.  There is no way a single character here or there, or even a bunch of characters can randomly change to other legitimate characters and those safeguards not be tripped.

Far worse things would be happening with that drive if it had water damage.  

Hope that helps.