Hello, this isn't software related but is certainly affecting my computer usage.
A flash drive has a fresh format, chkdsk shows no errors, so it should work OK and does until I take it to the school library computer and use it to save work files, download programs at high speed (8 mps) to the flash drive, etc.. Right now it is telling me the drive is unreadable and corrupted. I tried rebooting the school library computer to get a fresh boot but that didn't help. Other people here say their flash drives are working OK and the computer room people haven't a clue either.
At times I have had files disappear and access denied messages (on several flash drives I use) when I get home to install the files I downloaded so my procedure here has some big technical setting problem. Anybody have a clue what setting is causing this ?
I have XP SP3, the flash drive format is NTFS, and the drives work fine on my home computer otherwise. Maybe I should go back to FAT32 on flash drives but when they worked in the past they were more error-free in the long run on NTFS than a FAT32 formatted flash drive.
Thanks in advance for your responses.
Patrick013
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first thing. you formated your drive to NTFS? why? are you downloading single files larger than 4GiB? can your Flash drive store more than 4GiB? if not then Fat32 is just fine.
2nd thing is you may just have a bad thumb drive
3rd your thumb drive might be FAKE D:
>3rd your thumb drive might be FAKE D:
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
I'm pretty sure that you can't enable write caching on FAT32. I remember formatting to NTFS for that reason.
I'd run another chkdsk scan and try using a different USB port. Maybe that port's just messed up.
SWAG
I think I'll call Microsoft. This has to be a virus. I'll try FAT32 one more time but this certainly looks like a virus. Or a security setting on the library computer that doesn't say "access denied" but says "unreadable corruption", and really messes up your drive settings in the process. At home they run fine, even a big LINUX program from time to time with no problem. If it's not FAT32 related I'll sit on the phone with Microsoft. Those library computer managers might think everything is a security problem.
Thanks for your replies.
Patrick013
From what I know, ntfs is not a plug and play and unplug. It is a plug and play shutdown and unplug. That might be your problem, meaning that the flash drive is not "closing." Fat32 is a plug and play and unplug.
Load the App and Play :evil:
Hot Plug drives in a server running Server 2008 are formatted NTFS so they hare hotswapable like USB drives are. you seem miss informed. if you arnt then [CITATION NEEDED]
I have formatted flash drives in NTFS with write caching enabled and have had no problems with plugging/unplugging like a normal drive.
SWAG
for the +1.
Well, I should clarify: when I do plug the drive in, I have to make sure everything is closed and eject the drive. Strange things happen otherwise. Aside from that, there's no difference.
SWAG
Well it seems to be working again with FAT32.
I still say some network security program messed
it up, or caused it to think it was a shared network
drive and it wasn't. I have some work to do so I am
going to keep it as FAT32 for a couple more weeks and
then convert it to NTFS, and hopefully just use it
forever. Downloads at 8mbs at a couple of libraries
in town aren't bad at all. Never had a plug and play
problem with NTFS but FAT32 definitely needs to be ejected
properly.
Thanks for the responses.
patrick
and black and white .
read what you can on uwe sieber website:
http://www.uwe-sieber.de/usbstick_e.html
there you might find answers
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
some of the information there was obviously biased and other parts where incorrect. the major one was that removable drvices cannot have multiple partitions. this is FALSE. they can and it has been used by several companies.
Aren't partitions on a USB drive generally a bad idea though? I thought I'd read here and other places that you will most likely run into a lot of problems. So it's a bit like saying that you can attach a Rolls Royce jet engine to your Jeep Wrangler. Sure, you can, but it's probably not advisable.
Granted, I haven't read the article, and saying that something is not possible is different from saying it's not advisable. Still, in practical terms it doesn't seem to be possible.
Anyway... more fuel for the fire?
but what for?
I dont know any generic operating system which will properly read partitioned stick, whereby I mean partitoned same way as other drives , e.g. hard drives. One drive, partition table containing more then one entry.
This is the reason also why many partitioning tools will refuse to do such operation.
In fact I have managed one day to produce two partitons on one stick within one drive under linux, but when tried to use it later on other linux distro, the stick was either not partitioned at all or only first partition was read.
So far I also never met any commercial product using two partitons on one drive on a usb flash stick.
This all has not be confused with the way it is done by number of manufacturers of sticks. There you have defined *two separate drives* each one containing one partition only, that means one partition table in each separate faked drive containing only one partition.
This is by the way also the trick U3 and similar are doing, they define two drives, so everybody can read it without problems.
So some people try to make their stick 'not removable' by some tricks as flipping the removable bit. But this is seldom possible, the description of the device is stored in the controller eprom, difficult to change it from outside. Uwe Sieber describes also some way to overcome this problems by the use of special driver, just go through his website, you will find the instruction for it and understandable explanation why this all is so problematic.
There seem even to exist some preformated external hard drives that have the removable flag set and such devices are also difficult to be repartitioned if the flag is hard set.
Obviously standard hard drive with usb interface will not have this problems.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
Hello,
I cannot get Windows to read multiple partitions on a
flash drive. Explorer will not see them.
However, when I load a LINUX distro on it it has three
partitions. One for the main program(s), one for the
swap file, and one for home\documents etc.. LINUX
appears to be quite willing to mount any partition from
a flash drive as long as it is a LINUX file system.
patrick
This is exactly the type of problems that I had heard exist. Windows doesn't play nicely with partitioned Flash Drives.
Hello, first time here so please excuse me for not being very knowledgeable about flash drives. I just happened across your site yesterday and have learned a lot.
I notice the problem of the multiple partitions on a flash drive. Correct me if I am wrong please, but when you do a format of one partition don't you have to do the next one for it to show up. I have had experience with harddrives and fdisk.
Is it possible that this is the part missing. Thanks for reading
T95
>Correct me if I am wrong please, but when you do a format of one partition don't you have to do the next one for it to show up. I have had experience with harddrives and fdisk.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
It doesn't play nicely with removable drives period. I have a USB removable disk drive. i don't think it likes partitions there.
There was something that was out awhile to change the way they were mounted by windows, so they would support partitions. http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/04/17/lexar-tool-makes-creating-bootab...
I can't seem to find the file online, I'll have to see if I still have a copy . . .
Too many lonely hearts in the real world
Too many bridges you can burn
Too many tables you can't turn
Don't wanna live my life in the real world
this is the same way as used for the sticks.
The difference is, that external hard drives which behave as removable can be completely reformated and if standard harddrive is used in external drive adaptor or enclosure, no problems are present, partitioning such drive is no problem.
On my backup drives, connected by usb, I have number of parttions and all works fine.
If there is removable definition stored in the external media, then all starts to be a problem. Since in most usb flash media such info is stored in the firmware of the controller, it is not often not easy (but not impossible sometimes) to change it.
There is even small windows tool for 'flipping the removable bit', but it works only with certain controllers, I have not one in my collection.
But if someone has original lexar stick, it will work.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland
Quote :
"This is the reason also why many partitioning tools will refuse to do such operation"
The reason most partitioning-tools for windows will refuse
to create multiple partitions on a flash-drive is that windows does not support it
on drives that have the removable media-bit set . The OS will simply refuse .
Linux doesn't have this limitation and it works fine for me and everybody I know .
quote : "So some people try to make their stick 'not removable' by some tricks as flipping the removable bit. But this is seldom possible"
Wrong, it isn't a "trick", it's a feature of the controller, almost ALL flash-controllers allow you to set the removable media bit as you please, using the controllers "mass-production tool" (google it if you are interested, this being a US-site it's probably illegal Al-Qaeda cyber-terrorist-activity to point you to the location ..)
I strongly suspect the reason for this limitation in windows is the fact that
windows was incapable of creating properly aligned partitions prior to Vista .
To the OP.. You should NOT use NTFS on flash-drives unless you need the security-features . Performance-wise NTFS is not the right choice, 2 MFT's being constantly re-written is a show-stopper ..
>almost ALL flash-controllers allow you to set the removable media bit as you please, using the controllers "mass-production tool"
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland