taboo

Hello! I'm a noob to fujifilm need a bit of help. Long story: I have a Fuji XT-1 that I bought second hand from a friend, and I have a PC that does not come with an SD card reader. I purchased an sd card reader off amazon that i can stick the card into and get pics that way, however it has been causing me issues. Occasionally the drive wont read and says it needs to be reformatted (which I know not to do). After this happens, it causes the card to no longer be read by my PC or my camera, and the only fix I've been able to do is the command prompt > chkdsk solution. The command prompt fix has worked fine in the past, but I suppose the corruption has built up over time and last week, it became to much and I found that chkdsk had deleted everything on the SD card. I was able to recover the photos using a recovery service but I refuse to keep using the card reader knowing this will continue to be a problem. I know that I can connect my camera to the PC with a usb cable, however when I do so, the camera says "USB" on screen and wont let me select anything, and it does not read on my computer that it is connected, not even in the MyFinePix Import app. Maybe I have the wrong cord or something? It was one I just had laying around that fit my camera, so I dont know if i need a specialty one or not. TLDR: Computer isnt connecting to camera when I have it connected via USB, and camera only says "USB" on screen OR i need a better quality SD card reader suggestion that wont corrupt my data