Damn. I toasted a 32G USB flash drive.

[JoeH]

Zoidberg wrote:
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).

Its a trade-off for performance. Buffered writes to RAM that eventually get flushed to the drive are faster. There are OS's where data reliability takes precedence and do have a write mode that does go directly and immediately to storage with all updates to metadata as well. But they are not as fast at I/O.

OS X does attempt to lessen the chance of data corruption by flushing those buffered writes every minute or so to disk. As long as the drive does not keep them in its own cache, at that point the drive could be disconnected w/o an eject. But since the mechanical connection can be disrupted at will, there is a chance every time that some data I/O is incomplete.

[Jimmypoo]

I've had some thumb drives that the instant I eject it, it shows back up before I can actually remove
it from the USB port. VERY annoying. And if you just remove it anyway, sometimes there is data corruption.

[Racer X]

Jimmypoo wrote:
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?

32 gigs is the limit for FAT32 when formatted on a PC using M$ software.