Problem copying files to USB memory stick

This does occur to me _while_ using Windows (Win2K and XP) but maybe its some weird hardware problem..I haven't tried it on other OS's. Mods or admin move it if you can think of a better forum...


I've copied several files onto a USB stick, and occasionally find the file is corrupt, when I come to copy it to another machine.
I first noticed it with 100MB sections of a RAR file, on inspection with a hex editor some of the file was all zeros. There didnt seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, sometimes it would work, sometimes not. I have mostly had this problem with sticks bigger than 1GB. Today it happened with a 74kB PDF. Ive tried opening the file up from the drive I've just copied it to (the USB stick),that usually works fine; then I do the safely-eject hardware thing (always), take it to the destination, and file is corrupted or sometimes even missing.
I read somewhere about some flash drives (sold on eBay) claiming to have a bigger capacity than they really have. Could this be the cause? Mine are indeed all bought off eBay....

Anybody else had a similar problem?

Try running chkdsk on the flash drive and see if that solves the issue. Sounds like the thing may be defective though. Just curious, why would you get them off Ebay? Newegg.com, Tigerdirect.com usually sell them for a very reasonable price; new.

Why pay shipping?
Most drug and grocery stores have them and many like CVS/Walgreens often have them on sale...

What I use as often as USB thumb drives is a USB SD card reader...it works the same as a thumb drive but it allows me to interchange any number of SD cards

Not to derail this thread, but you can often times get free shipping from either sites.

As seack mentioned, shipping is often free.... But even if it's not, prices found on newegg with shipping are generally cheaper than those found at a convenience store or CVS/Walgreens.

Agreed to a point but...

Not necessarily true (all of the time) I recently grabbed a name brand (SanDisk) 4 gig thumb drive for $14.99 from the local grocery store (chain)...I also just got a 2 gig SD card (also SanDisk) for $7.95 from Walgreens...Wal-mart recently had two -2 gig SD cards for $15

and even if shipping is free...sometimes a dollar or two is worth the difference to have the device immediately rather than waiting a couple of days or more...

In the same respect...these days before ordering from newegg or tigerdirect...I check the local CompUSA store (part of tigerdirect)...they often have the exact same items in the local store that you normally have to order online...for the same price .

[/threadhijack]

thanks all for your replies. I also have an SD card reader and 2 x 1GB cards. I ran scandisk (with bad sector checking) on the device I had problems with recently, reported no problems. Ran chkdsk, it found some lost chains/fragments. Then I copied a file of about 30MB, a flash video clip, to the drive. Surprise surprise, file won't play, and "fc /b file1 file2" (binary compare) shows all zeros in the copy.

Can you try logging in as a different user and see if the files are still corrupted?

Have you tried using a different USB port ?

@aitken325i
I just tried an USB 1 port and it worked for the 30MB flv file :-)

then later it didnt....







@tj_nt
[I dont have different users but i have two machines ...]
on my XP laptop,i copied 5 CD-size .avi's to the drive, all wont render in mediaplayer(classic).

Eject drive, power up Win2k tower box, insert into onboard USB2 port. movie files not present! copy 7 x 100MB avi's to drive,they all play fine.

eject drive, insert into add-in pci-card usb2 port, 100MB files not present. copy a folder of 10 mp3's to drive,they play fine from drive in winamp.

eject drive,insert in pcmcia usb2 adapter on xp laptop, cd-size and 100MB files still missing, but mp3s present and play fine.

copy 10 avis between 8 - 80 MB to drive, 3 work.eject, into pcmcia port 2, files gone. copy another 700MB file,media player thinks about it then says it 'cant find a connectable filter for one of the pins in the graph'. I assume the file is not all zeros in this case, as it mentions a GUID type string. I played the file from the source before copying, no problems.

the free space reported by drive->properties is shrinking during the process of all this copying

ran chkdsk again, unrecoverable error in folder, also lost chains,convert to files. I'll leave them there for now.

copied 5 x 200MB files ,all tested from source, none play in MPClassic (cannot render)

chkdsk again, more errors with newly created folder for the 5 x200MB files. corrected with /F switch


try renaming lost fragment files from .chk to .avi, still wont play.

eject drive, put in usb1 port
copy 200MB file again, now its 'cant find a connectable filter for one of the pins in the graph' again

copy 30MB flv again played but not identical











the drive is 16GB (allegedly) and formatted to FAT32. I did try to format it for NTFS, so I could use it to transport DVD ISO's, but it didnt work

usually i am dragging files to copy them from explorer but i also tried using xcopy with the /V switch, which claims to verify, it doesnt report an error, but the files are still corrupt

XP shows me the volume label in explorer, Win2000 just says "removable drive" but it will show vol name in drive properties

From what I gather it seems to be the system rather than the USB device...

I could not follow everything you posted...if you are still having problems with only the one computer (with single user)...you might try creating a new user and see if the problem persists with that user interface...

Also, operating as an administrator for general browsing etc. is not recommended FWIW...

OK I am curious to know why you think it might be a per-user problem, but I'm open to suggestions so I created a new [limited] user and tried copying a few files:

1 30MB flv file worked fine
1 700MB avi file worked fine
3 more 700MB avi files didnt work

A friend had a similar problem with a thumb drive but it only arose when his daughter was logged into her account...

curious...do you always drag and drop the files?...I have had large files not move successfully when dragged across but are fine when using "move" or "copy" to commands...

mostly i drag-n-drop but I tried copy to from the xp-style left pane on a non folder-view window [that i normally never use ....like my folder tree view ;-) ] then did another 'fc /b' compare, all well

BTW, dont know if relevant, I use the Classic View option for the start menu