Ubuntu is messing up with USB pen drive

[Víctor A. Trejo Peña]

I have been usinng Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) for several days now. Last night, 
I started having issues while moving files to a USB pen drive (2Gb). I have 
enough RAM and and a fair processor, and had alredy been using the same pen 
drive for a day or two without noticing anything wrong.

Now, it takes up to 10 minutes to copy a SINGLE file (about 10 MB).

Has anything failed?

Thanks in advance.