Data getting lost in USB flash drive.

[jawanda56]

I've bought these two USB pen drives, Sony 4GB and Sony 8GB. These were purchased from different shops (No warrenty).

I'm facing problem with both:
I can't get back, what I put inside these Pen drives.

I mean, the data, which I copy on to these USB pen drives, gets corrupted and hence cannot be retrieved. Only about 700mb data remains intact and remaining gets corrupted. This is happening to both the pen drives.

I have a feeling, I might be using some wrong procedures for using the pen drive.

Both pen drives, show correct capacity in properties.

I tried formatting and makes no diffrence. The formatting completes OK.

I always use 'Unplug or Eject Hardware' from sys tray to remove them.

Does the pen drives need any resident software in it, which might have got deleted by formatting?

Need help to make these pen drives operational? Do let me know if any more info required.

My USB ports are working well as I use USB hard drive also.

My system: Pentium P4 2.8Ghz, MS Win2000, 512MB ram, 40GB HDD, PM800M2 mobo,
Protections: AVG Free, Ad-Aware SE, Zone Alarm firewall, SpyBot S&D, Easy Cleaner etc.

jawanda56

[patio]

How are you copying/moving the data ? ?

There may be a system problem here.

Does the same conditions happen on another machine ? ?

[jawanda56]

Potio:
I use 'send to' method. Also Copy n paste.

The same thing happens, when I use these USB pen drives in other computers.

jawanda56

[soybean]

Are those shops where you purchased these flash drives reputable shops?  Why no warranty? 

Did Windows ever recognize these drives at their full capacity?  In other words, if you connect the drive and go to My Computer, right click on the drive and select Properties, does, or did, it show the full capacity (4GB or 8GB)?

Here's some information that might be pertinent to your problem.  This comes from http://www.sony.net/Products/Media/Microvault/:

"An Important Notice for Windows 2000 Users
After applying the HotFix KB835732 distributed by Microsoft for Windows 2000 on April, 2004, some application software for the Micro Vault devices may not operate properly. In case of any problem, please download the latest version of the software from the website and try again."

[CBMatt]

You've had some problems with flash drives before...  Are these the same ones that were infected with the RavMonE virus last month?

[jawanda56]

Did Windows ever recognize these drives at their full capacity?

Yes, windows do recognize the full capacity of the drives:
8GB showing 7.99GB and 4GB drive showing 3.99GB in the properties.

You've had some problems with flash drives before... 

Yes, these are same flash drives, which were purchased in China's, and had RavMonE.exe in them. I doubt that these are fake Sony Brand. The virus was successfully removed.
Somehow, the data copied to these drives cannot be recovered. The data is copied normally as I see the animation of files flying from one folder to another, with the progress bar and the remaining time. When I open the flash drive, I see mostly folders empty or corrupted.
Help

jawanda56

[patio]

I doubt that these are fake Sony Brand.

I'm not convinced...

With the price of flash memory falling thru the floor i would just replace them....and don't buy another Sony.

[CBMatt]

Given their history, I wouldn't trust these flash drives to be reliable, especially if you're having this problem on multiple computers.  China is notorious for having counterfeits, and I think that may very well be the case here.  You can try using Recuva or PC Inspector to recover files on those flash drives, but I don't know how well that might work.

[jawanda56]

With the price of flash memory falling thru the floor i would just replace them

OK, Potio, Before replacing or throwing away these useless pen drives, may I know, if there is any way to test them, similer to MemTest. I would rather want to know as what's wrong with these pen drives. I ran through 'Error Checking' from properties>tools>Error Checking, phase 1 show no errors.
Any ideas?

Recuva or PC Inspector to recover files

Data recovery is not required at the moment, as there is nothing important in the drives. Is there any hope to make the pen drives reliable?

jawanda56

[CBMatt]

My main suggestion would be to format the flash drive, but you said you already tried that.  I think they might just be faulty.  Other than replacing the drives, I'm really not sure what else you could try.  Sorry.

[jawanda56]

Hi Chris, I'm glad you stepped in.

My main suggestion would be to format the flash drive

Now a question about formatting of Flash drive?
There are three options in File Syatem i.e. FAT, NTFS and FAT32. I tried each and NTFS file system does not complete the format, whereas other two file systems can be used to format the pendrive. So which file system should be for a Pen Drive?

Will changing from FAT32 to FAT file system help?

jawanda56

[patio]

FAT32 should be used.

[Carbon Dudeoxide]

What about FAT?

[patio]

Why ? ?

FAT uses larger sectors which means it's less efficient to use space wise...

[soybean]

Did you look into this?:

Here's some information that might be pertinent to your problem.  This comes from http://www.sony.net/Products/Media/Microvault/:

"An Important Notice for Windows 2000 Users
After applying the HotFix KB835732 distributed by Microsoft for Windows 2000 on April, 2004, some application software for the Micro Vault devices may not operate properly. In case of any problem, please download the latest version of the software from the website and try again."