I added several accounts to Pidgin and some extensions to Firefox 3 on my usb flash drive. I safely removed the drive and upon reinserting the drive the next day, I noticed that my accounts were not there and my extensions had vanished. What could be the cause of this? How could I repair this? My drive is formatted as FAT32 and I am able to save documents and other files. My programs, however, will not save their settings.
[topic subject line clarified by mod Tim]
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Are you starting it using PidginPortable.exe and are you properly ejecting the drive?
Yes, I am ejecting the drive properly (I stated that in my first post
.)
I am running Pidgin and Firefox using the PortableApps menu.
What about changing settings then exiting the program,(not the menu) then restarting it from the menu? Are your settings still lost?
I can't test it right now because my partition table on my flash drive appears to have been corrupted. I attempted to resolve the problem by removing all portable applications and then reinstalling the PortableApps (full version). After reinstalling, I found that I was unable to execute the any program on my flash drive. I also found that if I create a text file, save it, and then safely eject the drive the data in the text file vanishes upon reconnecting the usb flash drive. I am unsure as to what happened to my flash drive. I think that the partition may have become corrupted but I don't know how.
Sounds like the controller might be going bad
How can I test the controller? Is there software available that will allow me to test it?
You can use H2testw to test your flash drive hardware. There's an English readme.txt file within the zip file. Please be sure to read it carefully.
H2testw was developed by the German computer magazine c't when faked flash drives were sold end of 2007. But it also detects other hardware problems.
I recommend strongly to delete all files on your drive before testing.
Also, I ensured that the installer for the PortableApps suite was downloaded properly by running a md5sum check on it.
Flash drives can't be partitioned on Windows unless you install a special driver. Then it'll only work on your copy of Windows.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Can you point me to this software or at least give me the name so I can hunt it down?
Release Team Member
You can use fdisk /dev/sda (or /sdb, /sdc ...) under Linux. If you haven't installed Linux you can use a Live CD like Knoppix or Sidux. But chances are big that your drive won't work under Windows after partitioning. Be warned!
Recommended further reading: On flash drive only the first partition works
Ok, I repartitioned the flash drive and reinstalled my portable applications and everything seems to be working ok. But I would like to know how my partition could have been corrupted?
i know its the easy out but it could be have you tried scanning your computer with an up to date AV?
I used a public computer at a local college that had Kaspersky antivirus loaded on it. I scanned the flash drive for viruses with McAfee's stinger utility and it found none.
Just a point of note: the McAfee "stinger" tool/utility is very, very limited in what it looks for. It is not a portable version McAFee antivirus.
Just an FYI,
Tim
Things have got to get better, they can't get worse, or can they?
Today, I began experiencing the problem again. If I install any new portable applications, they crash. If I install any firefox extensions and then safely eject the drive, the extensions vanish and I get a dialog upon restartinig firefox stating that 1 new addon had been installed. However, all of my addons are now missing!
Did you use H2testw to test your drive? What was the result?
Below are the results:
The media is likely to be defective.
951.9 MByte OK (1949689 sectors)
3.0 GByte DATA LOST (6387719 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (
Yes, you need another flash drive. The result does point out a defective drive.
Thanks for telling me about the flash drive utility. Also I would like to be able to correct a typographical error I made. Is there a way to do that?
by clicking the "edit" button but only if noone has replied to the post in question.
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