Problems with flash drive

[stephenj148]

Okay, I have no idea what the cause of my flash drive dilemma may be, but it's giving me a headache!!!

So,

To start off its a PNY 4G if this makes a difference.

I use a mac, but when I go to a PC, it tells me I need to reformat the drive. So when I try to do that, it makes a 200 MB partition on the drive, which again makes no sense.

Other problems include files becoming corrupt, not opening, or failing at random times. Does anyone know of any reason why this drive is causing me so many problems. I'm tired of loosing Graphic Design projects off this thing. Obviously I back them up, but when I go from my dorm to the lab, things become a pain when I need to walk back and forth because my flash drive is being a PITA

 

[joeshaul]

Sounds broke to me. Does it give you issues copying to/from the Mac by itself? How long have you had it/how often have you used it/experienced this problem?

Occasionally file systems would get corrupted if you just removed the drive without locking it ("Safely Remove Hardware" under Windows), however most newer flash drives rarely exhibit this problem anymore. Also all flash drives have a limited life on them as far as the reads/writes they're able to do, this number is fairly huge though (think around 10,000-20,000 writes to the same segment).

Pny probably has a warranty system in place, however I usually consider flash drives a disposable thing. My suggestion would be toss $5 at a smaller drive, or get a new 4 gig for $10.

 

[stephenj148]

fairly new drive, given me problems since after the first week or so. Saving to the drive gives me no problems. Its when I go to put them elsewhere or open them I get issues

That and going to a PC is a headache aswell

 

[joeshaul]

Might want to try the application located here:
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?m=200903

It's a PC app, so you'll have to run it on another computer, but it should do a pretty thorough read/write test and tell you if the drive itself is bad, or if it's just an issue with file systems. My guess would be the drive has failed though. Much like when CD's would fail after writing the table of contents first, just cause you can sometimes see a file on the list doesn't mean it actually is, that app wil lwrite data, then read it to verify that the data was written correctly. USB drives do not warp like Floppy Drives (over time a floppy drive's head may read/write at a different angle causing it to only read disks it made, and saying all other floppy disks are "unformatted" and vice versa), they will however do some strange things sometimes!

 

[choucove]

By the sounds of it, with losing files or corrupted files, and constantly pestering about needing to reformat, that you might have a failing flash drive here. They are cheap enough, find a replacement and call it a cheap investment in relieving your frustrations.

I had a flash drive that did something similar, though it was a higher capacity 8GB ScanDisk. I never took it back and forth between a PC and Mac, however. I ended up reformatting to an NTFS partition and all my troubles with it disappeared.

 

[klmiller611]

I have a 1GB flash drive that acts similar, I move files from my Mac to the RIP station on it. On occasion, the PC will not recognize the drive. Usually what I have to do is take it back to the Mac and run disc utility on it, it finds no errors, but then I can take it back to the PC and it works.