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    USB Problems

    Discussion in 'Windows OS and Software' started by Stunner, May 15, 2008.

  1. Stunner

    Stunner Notebook Deity

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    I have a 4GB Emprex USB flash drive and have windows XP. I recently was having issues with deleting a folder because an error message came up saying that the directory was not empty, and even after doing through the directory to delete the file and then attempting the delete, the same message would pop up. I would then re-enter the directories to find the file, and sure enough the file I deleted was there, but the space of the file was reported to be 0KB.

    Getting fed up, I just decided to reformat the drive itself. I did and I formatted with these options:

    Capacity: 3.76 GB(only option)
    File System: FAT32(only option)
    Allocation unit size: Default allocation(only option)

    I named my volume and did NOT select "Quick Format". I went ahead and reformatted the USB drive and the files were all gone.

    Now I needed to transfer music between two computers, an XP and a Vista machine, so I would fill it up with music, putting in selected artist directories at a time. At a certain point it would give me an error about my USB drive being write protected and that I would have to remove this write protection in order to continue add data to the drive. This happens at 2.70GB when my USB drive has 3.76GB of space... what gives? Now I have 2.40 GB of space used up on my USB drive as of now, and whenever I try to paste any more data(lets say for example directory A) it tells me that it is not possible because the device is not ready. And after that, the device has directory A in it, but with no data in it at all. And when I try to delete the directory it says that the operation cannot be done because the directory is not empty... I check the contents and there is absolutely nothing in the directory...

    Anyone have any idea what is going on? Any help is appreciated! Thanks in advance!
     
  2. The_Observer

    The_Observer 9262 is the best:)

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    I had this problem with a 64MB USB drive.The drive was damaged from falling down.

    How old is it?If you make an RMA or something it's a good time to do so.

    Some symptoms do seem like a virus problem too.Are both of your computers clean?
     
  3. Stunner

    Stunner Notebook Deity

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    This flash drive is fairly new, got it late last year around September. And yeah both computers are completely clean. I also thought it may have been a virus at first.
     
  4. goofball

    goofball Notebook Deity

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    Definitely sounds like a bad drive to me.
     
  5. Carrot Muncher

    Carrot Muncher Notebook Evangelist

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    Can't you do some kind of hdd check on it?

    Seagate and such do apps that check the hdd for errors.