What the ^@*$ happened to my files? (USB Pen drive)

[Joe The PC Doc]

I keep my repair tools on a 2.0 GB USB flash drive for use in my business..

Well, I needed to copy a couple files from my linux OS to a customer's laptop (BIOS upgrades). Well, I plugged in the USB drive in the customer's laptop, and it failed to recognize it.. and again.. but it worked the third time. To my dismay..

Now, I have a laundry list of garbage files on my drive, and half of my business tools are missing!
The files are all 99 KB and dated in the year 2049. they're three character file names, like e1e.ii1 and the like.

I haven't seen this yet... Is my USB drive corrupted? It would be much less annoying if I didn't have to restore my backups.

 

[JohnR]

Sounds like your data is corrupt, yes. Possibly the customer's machine was screwed up and broke your drive's file system, possibly pulling the drive without "ejecting" it did it. Flash sticks are erratic and unreliable at best.

Reformat the USB drive, and copy your toolkit back onto it. You *do* have a backup copy of your toolkit, or two, or three, right?

Additional thought: If it's your toolkit, intended to be plugged into damaged, unreliable, or potentially infected machines? Use a CD or DVD instead of a USB key. Save the USB key for times when you actually need to transfer data that's specific to the customer, when you're also pretty sure the customer's machine is clean.

 

[Bryce W]

Ive seen this before. As JohnR said, it sounds like your data is corrupt due to possibly pulling the drive out without ejecting it.

When this happened to me something was writing to the USB drive when I ejected it, it resulted in garbage files with names like e45n456y6534t345$$$ which werent easily deletable.

I suggest that you just format the drive again. If you need to restore your utility kit, I know a site with a great computer repair utility kit available for download.

 

[Joe The PC Doc]

JohnR: I have three backups, but the flash drive is my "day to day" media... Will set me back a couple days, nothing I can't handle.

I'm sure I ejected it three or four times in a row on this customer's laptop. He seemed to be having some power issue I couldn't nail down. That may have caused it.

I'll keep the CD advice in mind, I do have a CD copy of my tools as well, but leaned more on the USB drive. It seems easier to keep current I guess.

BryceW: I'll give credit when credit's due, I was/am using a modified version of the Technibble utility kit as most of flash drive tools. I was excited when you released that great collection of programs! I was actually beginning to build my own with Pstart.

You mentioned your files corrupted when you ejected while writing to it? I know you use Linux quite a bit, are you supposed to unmount or eject your drives in Linux too? I may have done that, it seemed Kubuntu wasn't genuinely copying the files I wanted...

Well, it's time to format the flash drive and play catch up, thanks for your help guys!

 

[greggh]

Yes you unmount them in linux too, same as windows.

 

[tkrabec]

It is more important to unmount in Linux than windows. Linux is a great and wonderful beast. but it can be tempermental.

 

[JohnR]

It is more important to unmount in Linux than windows. Linux is a great and wonderful beast. but it can be tempermental.

Trivia I found very handy: If you can't umount the drive because the computer says it's in use, run "lsof mountpoint" - the command is "list open files", and it will give you the name of all processes that current hold open files on the drive.

Then, you can stop the processes and unlock the files, allowing you to safely unmount the file.

Or you could just shut down and unplug the drive when the machine's turned off. That's safe, too.

 

[Joe The PC Doc]

Thanks for the advice everyone, I'll definate "Safely Remove" my USB drives from now on! I'm still learning the Linux ropes... But I like what I see so far!

 

[Vitiated]

I suggest that you just format the drive again. If you need to restore your utility kit, I know a site with a great computer repair utility kit available for download.

Dude, I know this is your site and all, but I'm here for a good exchange of tech information; imho, take the ware pimping down a notch or two.

 

[MrMille]

ware pimping?

/raises eyebrow in disbelief

 

[GraemeP]

Ware Pimping. LoL. Its a ace Repair utility kit and well worth pimping it.