USB Drive Scan and Fix 1

[kjv1611]

I was wondering if anyone here has found a way to get the annoying scan and fix prompts to not come up for USB thumb drives in Vista?

This has probably already been asked/discussed, but I could not find any threads of such.

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"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[linney]

Are you seeing that message with one particular USB thumb drive or with several drives? Maybe your drive is faulty?

Have you tried copying the data off the drive and reformatting it using the correct file system, probably FAT, and seeing if that stops the message?

CHKNTFS.EXE: What You Can Use It For

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;160963#kb1

 

[kjv1611]

Well, the 2GB Corsair voyager was scanned, and worked with no problems. The 8GB works fine on every other computer. Just to see, I scanned it with XP, and even reformatted it - only option showing was Fat32. All shows clear here in XP. I'll try it on the Vista machine in just a little bit (going to that location shortly). I'll post back tonight or tomorrow.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[kjv1611]

I tried the 8GB drive tonight no the Vista machine.

Here are the results:
[ul][li]The drive shows under "Computer"[/li]
[li]If I double-clicked on the drive, or "explore" the drive, it opened after a long wait, but then showed no files.
[ul][li]This would not be strange, if there were no files, but there were a few. They were hidden, but I enabled "show hidden files" and even "show system files", though I disabled the latter option after testing.[/li][/ul][/li]
[li]When I tried to transfer any file to the thumb drive by clicking and dragging, I got the error message, "Could not find this item. This is no longer located in C:\...."[/li]
[li]Tried to format from "Computer" by right-clicking on the drive (the autorun icon shows correctly), the screen flashes, but nothing happens.[/li]
[li]Computer management shows a drive letter for the drive, shows it is a removable device, but it shows it is not there.[/li]
[li]If I left click on "remove hardware" icon in task tray, and then select the drive, and choose remove, it says it removes it correctly.[/li]
[li]Prior to removing the hardware option, I tried right-clicking on the drive, and hitting "eject", and it gave an error "this device is currently in use" - no activity was showing with the LED on the drive.[/li]
[/ul]

Hopefully this will help shed some light for someone. As for me, I'm clueless. It works 100% fine on XP with absolutely no errors. On the Vista machine, I have only tried one other drive - a 2GB version of the Corsair flash voyager.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me

 

[linney]

I think drives over 2GB cannot be formatted as FAT, probably due to file and partition restrictions with FAT, so that is why FAT32 was offered? Even FAT32 has limits, such as the size of files cannot be greater than 4GB.

Limitations of the FAT32 File System in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314463

Why something works in XP but not in Vista I can only surmise that XP is a bit more tolerant than Vista when it comes to reading slightly faulty drives. In either case I don't think you should rely too much on the survival, long term, of any data on the 8GB drive.

 

[kjv1611]

Yeah, true. One thing I wonder is if I can submit it for warranty repair, then, based solely on the Vista machine. I know from experience that Corsair does stand behind their products. I might just try that route.

Thanks for the advice.

Oh, as far as the file sizes, at the time, the only files on the drive were small files < 1MB each, probably < 1MB total - last time I tried, anyway.

--

"If to err is human, then I must be some kind of human!" -Me