Curious about folks' flash drive problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter cyd
  • Start date Start date
C

cyd

I know a lot of people have problems with their flash drive devices and
am wondering how many of those have formatted their flash drives and
why they formatted them.

Thanks!
C
 
cyd said:
I know a lot of people have problems with their flash drive devices and
am wondering how many of those have formatted their flash drives and
why they formatted them.

Thanks!
C
Click to expand...

When you Yank them, without Properly stopping the usb device first
there are sometimes file system errors. Usually no permanent harm done.
 
1GB Sandisk Cruzer thumbdrive via USB, used flash memory internally.
Situation: Copied some application install programs and their folders to
this drive at my home. Took the thumbdrive to my daughter's home, connected
to her PC, and installed these apps. Both PCs use XP w/SP2.
Brought the thumbdrive back home and all appeared well in XP. However, I
also have access to this thumbdrive in 98SE and Millenium Edition. A driver
from Sandisk was installed to allow this, and worked fine. In 98SE, all it
saw was a raw filesystem, no files. Booting back to XP, I copied all the
files and folders to a temp location on my hard drive. Formatted the
thumbdrive, and copied all back to the thumbdrive. 98SE could now see the
Cruzer's contents. Never checked it in ME, but works okay now.
 
When you Yank them, without Properly stopping the usb device first
there are sometimes file system errors. Usually no permanent harm done.
Click to expand...

I always stop mine. It's unreadable at the moment but I haven't had
time to fix it.

I've noticed that many reports involve a couple of things. One is
formatting (which flash drives shouldn't require) and the other
involves use on a combination of W2K and XP pc's.

I also installed an app on mine. It was a mobile encryption app that
required the encrypted volume file be formatted. And I was transferring
files from a W2K to an XP SP2 for the purpose of burning a CD.

The problem drive is a 2GB Tiny Drive. I don't know who makes it. But I
have another, 128MB RunDisk, that is now also having problems that
aren't the same. W2K likes it fine but XP finds it then spits it out
and now won't recognize it without a USB extension cable that I
attached in order to be able to reach it better as I was removing and
replacing it in an effort to get XP to see it.

I don't need help to fix it, I'm just wondering what others did prior
to failure. I didn't know the problem was so common. I''m gathering
data for a possible quick and dirty fix.
 
....a related issue / consideration, (I use a small 256mb UBS "pen" drive)

I suspect that they will have a relatively short life expectancy, due to the
physical characteristics of eeproms'
Years ago I watched on t.v. a scanning electron microscope(I think it was),
movie of an eeprom being written to, and you could see thousands of little
flaps like dominos tipping one way for "0" and the other for "1" ...so with
"moving parts" albeit microscopic, I wouldnt' think they'll last that long.
.... though my Olympus XD memory cards seem to go on forever !

regards, Richard
 
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