Maximum PC

My flash drive won't save files to it anymore without corrupting them. I've tried it with text files and compressed folders, along with some other ones. They're fine until I remove the drive ("safely" or by yanking it); after that, when I plug it back in, they're corrupted and unusable.

It is a 16GB generic drive, so I can see why it would not hold up as well, and this has happened to another generic drive, but I have used it for almost two months and it has been big, fast, and perfect.

So I ran the disk checker in all its forms, with no change. I'm defragmenting it right now, but I don't see how that would help. Only other thing I could think of would be to reformat it, but again, I've been through that routine with my previous generic drive.

Sounds like a bad memory chip in that drive, it might be time to deposit it in the circular file.

Nasty

I don't know about that, because it hasn't corrupted the files that were on it before it started messing up. If it had a bad chip, I think it might have started having problems immediately. It doesn't write files, which makes me wonder if it has to do with the Index file being corrupted. If that's the case, I would need to replace that file. I don't know how to do that.

In my first post, I mentioned defragmenting it. It didn't fix it.

Defragmenting a USB Flash based drive is bad ju-ju. Those things are limited in their read/write cycles and a defrag uses up a whole bunch of them. Whole bunch may not be a highly tecnical term, but when a lot of generic flash based drives are only turning in 10,000 to 50,000 cycles compared to a name brand that may get 300,000+, you can see where a generic drive won't last nearly as long.

I do heavy transfers between home and work on my name brand flash based drives. I'm lucky to get one to last a year. The more you write stuff to it, the reads alone don't use up those cycles, the faster they die.

So if you've regularly defraged a flash based drive, or written new info to it daily, I wouldn't be surprised a generic only lasted a couple to three months.

It magically, randomly started working again...for now. Problems like this don't stay gone. I actually do have a couple other Sandisk 2GB drives, but I need the increased capacity often.

If nothing else works you might want to try reformating the drive
Also have you tried runnign check disk on it?

I ran check disk, but it didn't turn anything up.

This isn't logical. It wasn't messed up (chip fail) before, so of course it wasn't corrupting. It is messed up now (possible chip fail) and now corrupting data.

Follow? Let's say you had a heart attack. Your retort to the doctor is that "it wasn't broken before, so he must be incorrect".

Hardware can fail. Yours very well might be. Tossing these in the garbage after some time isn't rare at all.

Keep in mind this problem isn't currently happening. It is fixed for now, but I think it could happen again someday. What was formerly happening was that new files being written were corrupted, but old files written prior to the corruption were fine.

You'd think I'd buy a new one by now but noooo. Well, I do have another 2GB drive, but it is a media player and is huge, and Big Red is like an inch. See it worked great until I cold-yanked it from a Win7 x86 system (which usually works fine--nothing was being written to it). Now it won't even be recognized on any computer. The offerings from downloads.cnet are pathetic-none of them could find the drive, and most of them are for finding deleted files.

They read as 0 bytes free, 0 bytes available. They don't display the usual friendly name of the drive (Big Red). When I try to run error checking, I get this message: "The disk check could not be performed because windows can't access the disk." Windows says the device is working properly. Windows lies.

What is the root cause, and how can I fix it?

I'm going to replace the drive with a better one, but here's the problem- I back up the stuff that is on the drive to the Internet usually, but before I could back the stuff up, the flash drive glitched. So I'm stuck with trying to get the stupid thing to work again, just so I can get those irreplaceable files off.

If you are using a front usb port, use a back usb port and I bet it will work. I have a 16 gig HP flash drive and it won't work right in the front ports of my computer or any other for that matter, as soon as I plug it in the back it works fine. So, my guess is the voltage drop going to the front ports through the umbilical cord connecting it to the motherboard is to much for the drive to function properly....just a guess now

Nasty

Thanks nasty. I tried it on three different PCs. The one I cold yanked it from had non-high-speed USB 2.0 ports. I've since tried it out again on that one (front and back), and the two PCs upstairs (front and back). All the PCs run Win7, so maybe I should try it on a different OS. I don't think so though, because it worked fine with Win7 before.

If it don't work on other pcs with a different operating system, I would say that Chumly is right and it went south.

Nasty

That's a non-logical statement.

Crap...I thought I had a bit of DeJaVu! Read Chumly...read!

They're fairly cheap now, and you may be able to double your capacity for the price you originally paid. And I haven't had a problem cold yanking (man that sounds dirty...and uncomfortable) for a while. Even in XP I would pull them out and all would be fine.

Nasty, I haven't tried it on other OSes yet. I'd have to dust off one from the basement. I'll get around to it eventually.
[Edit]: I tried it out on WinXP x86. Exact same problem. It might be worth mentioning that the flash drive's activity light blinked in an off-on pattern whenever it was plugged in. Same on the other computers. Maybe it's indicating "I'm dead you moron."

Chumly, you're getting the problem mixed up. That quote is from the first post I made. A little history on the drive: it was included for free with a completely unrelated eBay purchase (I think it was some other piece of knockoff Chinese hardware). Very mysterious, especially considering how huge the capacity of the drive was compared to common drives at the time. Then it started corrupting files. Then it started working fine for more than a year. Then it messed up again, and Windows won't even recognize it.

The problem is not replacing the drive. The problem is replacing the files on the drive: they were the one and only copies of the contents. That's why I need to access the drive one last time before I dispose of it forever.

Just for giggles try to access the drive in safe mode.

Nasty

Did that, same result. I wonder if I could tear off the NAND chip and solder it onto another drive. Nah. Not worth it.

Run Hard Drive Regenerator on that drive. You will find that on Hiren's book disk.

I found out by looking on eBay what the drive is if it makes any difference. It's a knockoff of a Kingston Data Traveler 101 16GB.

Flipper, do you know of a way to just put that app on a boot disk instead of all the other apps? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like Hard Drive Regenerator isn't free. There's still the problem of the drive not being detected. Maybe if it's in that different operating environment it will be different. I know it might work on flash drives anyway, but isn't it called Hard Drive Regenerator?

yes. while technically the program does cost money on Hiren's book disk it is there free. I don't know if it is legal or not but it is there. As for putting the app by itself, you can but is a real pain.