After some updates after upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04 my Lenovo Thinkpad computer refused to detect USB drives. It first gave the impression that my USB stick was broken, but even all other sticks didn’t work. It even didn’t pop up in disks. When you run into this problem, you can do the following trick to mitigate this behaviour. I’ve got the idea from a post from 2004, but it works after a reboot:
echo -1 > cat /sys/module/usbcore/parameters/autosuspend
0
Brain/Drain/Pain 