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Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - Printable Version

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Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - RAMd®d - 07-03-2011

Well, lightly toasted anyway.

But permanently toasted.

I always try to eject flash drives when I'm done because I've lost a couple in the past. Recently I failed to, and there was much weirdness when using it. I couldn't drag and drop more than one file at a time. Usually I Cmd-A and drag a bunch to another window. I could drag them to the desktop but not another window.

And if I tried, then when I moved the cursor up and down, all the files would be unselected and reselected as the cursor passed back and forth. Then drag them all to a window would unselect all but the one the cursor was on... And it wouldn't copy over.

Restarting the mini didn't help. I ran Disk Repair on the USB drive, didn't help. I repartitioned the drive- it was one partition, and I selected 1 partition and engaged. The result was one partition (GUID'd already) but with a dark blue area displayed at the top of Disk Utility's volume graphic. It said my newly NnP'ed volume was a 32G with 26G available.

Did the NnP thing again and I got someting like 30.19 available. I'm good for two weeks or so and I did it again. This time the dark matter stayed and I'm down to 26G available. So I've got to a) do some shopping and b) put a DO NOT PULL yellow on it.


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - Racer X - 07-03-2011

Sometimes if you format back and forth between HFS+ and DOS a few times, it will clear up. Maybe if you have access to a PC do a full format on it.


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - space-time - 07-03-2011

I saw a guy do this all the time on a Widows PC and a Tektronix scope, I saw him at least 100 times in 2 days we tested together; he does that all the time, and the flash drive was still OK.


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - RAMd®d - 07-03-2011

he does that all the time, and the flash drive was still OK.

Good for him.

Doesn't help me one damn bit.


Sometimes if you format back and forth between HFS+ and DOS a few times, it will clear up. Maybe if you have access to a PC do a full format on it.

Well, it did clear up the first time 'round, so I'll give it a try when I get back to work. I didn't know about going back and forth from HFS to DOS.

Thanks, Racer.


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - space-time - 07-03-2011

Doesn't help me one damn bit.

pun intended or not?


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - Panopticon - 07-03-2011

this usually works for me...
partition* {1 only} to MBR & format as FAT.
{ * don't use current setting}


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - freeradical - 07-03-2011

space-time wrote:
I saw a guy do this all the time on a Widows PC and a Tektronix scope, I saw him at least 100 times in 2 days we tested together; he does that all the time, and the flash drive was still OK.

Yeah, sometimes you can get away with this if the directory is updated, but it's not a good idea.


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - JoeH - 07-03-2011

freeradical wrote:
[quote=space-time]
I saw a guy do this all the time on a Widows PC and a Tektronix scope, I saw him at least 100 times in 2 days we tested together; he does that all the time, and the flash drive was still OK.

Yeah, sometimes you can get away with this if the directory is updated, but it's not a good idea.
I've seen lots of persons "get away with it" plugging and unplugging items such as ADB, SCSI, PS/2 ports, VGA and the like over the years. Eventually the odds gets the and something does go wrong. Though recent USB storage drivers do their best to fool-proof the connection by flushing data and metadata writes to the device on a regular basis. But all it takes is not waiting long enough for that to happen and you end up with a corrupted drive.


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - Jimmypoo - 07-03-2011

Whenever you get stuck with one and you haven't got a PC to fix it on, goto OfficeDepot, et. al.,
and format it via the Command Line.

There are still some that won't show up - if they are formatted with HFS+. I once knew the secret little
app that is on Winduds that will take care of whatever drive is in position "E" or "F" or whatever the case
may be, and I posted about it - but it will be difficult to find here (and it's possible it might be in the archives
at DM as well - in the last few thousand posts there.

If anyone knows the name of that app ==== PLEASE put it in this thread! It's part of the OS - for when
Format (via Command Line) does NOT see the drive attached.

Be sure to format your thumb back to whatever it originally was. I don't know what format the BIG drives
are shipping as.... can you format something that large with FAT 16?? Or even FAT 32?


Re: Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive. - Zoidberg - 07-03-2011

I'm still wondering why at this point in OS brainpower it's still an issue. There should be some kind of parachute, per se, for removing w/o ejecting (a la the iPhone when it's hooked up in iTunes).