I recently purchased a 16GB Cruzer flash drive and have been having a strange issue with it. I’m trying to put .MP3 files on it to be played in the car while traveling. I can put roughly about 5GB of mp3’s on the drive and it seems to work fine. When i try and put more folders with mp3’s on it after about 6-7GB’s they seem to be disappearing. I copy the folders over, remove the drive using the proper safe method with windows. I reinsert the drive and check the folders they are empty, however the space on the drives shows that the data is there but i just can’t see it. Not all the folders are empty but only some are. I have tried reformatting the drive several times with FAT 32 and re-copying data over again, samething happens. I’ve tried it on two different computers, no change. I’ve checked the drive for errors and it shows none. I’ve checked for hidden files and there are none. Thinking it may have something to do with the MP3 files themselves I’ve also tried copying a smaller number of larger video files to the drive, same result. I doubled checked my system with virus scan and malware scan to see if there wasn’t something malicious causing it and i can’t find any on ether computer I’ve tried copying from. This is also the second flash drive I’ve bought to have this issue. The first drive was an off brand so i figured it just had a defect, on this drive i could get a little more data on before having the problem(about 9-10GB). So i went with the sandisk thinking I’d have better luck with getting a good drive. Now I’m beginning to think it’s something else and not the drive itself. I’m running WinXP. Any help is appreciated
If the files are larger than 4GB they won’t fit on the FAT32 format. If their file attribute is set to hidden they will be there but not show. If they contain a string that a machine’s AV suspects as malware they could be being automatically deleted.
If the problem has happened on 2 different USB drives it could imply the problem is not the USB drives themselves.
None of the files are over 1GB… the MP3’s are all under 10MB or so. None are set to hidden. They have all been scanned with the systems AV program multiple times and it didn’t find anything. I can try turning off the systems AV protection before copying but it hasn’t been giving any warning when i copy the files. I have successfully copied the same files specifically to the drive that have at othertimes disappeared when i copied them with a larger number of other files. IT just seems like once i go over the 5GB or so amount it randomly has the folders that start showing empty. Many times they are the last set of folders in the list alphabetically. IT really has me stumped. Especially since i’m seeing it happen on two seperate computers
hmmmmm Since it’s the last of the files being copied it could be due to a heat problem. The USB stick or the machines port could be getting warm. Or it could be some repetitive task is automatically kicking off and choaking resources.
Definitely a strange problem.
Do you think it could be some sort of driver issue or a problem with the specific motherboard. I say this because both machines have similar motherboards. They are Asus AMD AM2+ style boards, although two different models with a couple years of time between manufacturing dates. Both machines are using the generic windows XP USB drivers and ASUS doesn’t seem to have anything newer then what windows offers for driver. Or maybe even a setting in BIOS or else where? As for heat issue, the stick isn’t getting hot at all and i don’t leave it plugged in when not in use so it would only be plugged in for 20-30mins while trying to copy the files.
Hope the sandisk is a genuine one, I was told there are some fake flash drive out there that they use 4gb or 8gb drives to use a special program to fool the operating system that is 16 or 32gb. but when you reach to the capacity it shows the true capacity. hope this is not your case.
I have a problem with my 2 brand new 16gb sandisk, I can’t install u3 launchpad to it. it say the drive I have is not a sandisk smart drive. I purchase these drive for use with u3 launchpad and it can’t be installed.
best wishes
SanDisk no longer makes USB drives that support U3.
