RE: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini
On 11 Jun 2005 at 13:17, nobozoz wrote: Well, guess what. I was able to pull most of the important stuff off the Cruzer by repeatedly mounting the drive in WINXP and copying one root-based folder at a time. About 20 of the 34 or so root folders managed to make it to the HDD intact Not too shabby. the rest were lost because they couldn't be read at all - even partially. Ouch. Jim, Now that you listed the number of folders you had on the drive, it reminded me that my brother mentioned that a corporate IT guy where he works told him that the jump drives do not play well if they have too many files contained within too few folders. Something you might want to investigate. Does this make any sense to anyone ? Vince
RE: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini
Back in the DOS days when all we had was FAT12/FAT16, there was and still is a restriction on how many root entries there can be - 512 root entries in FAT16 according to Microsoft. Also, the volume label consumes one of those 512 32-byte root entries. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/windowsserver2003/library/TechR ef/50cd4ffc-1389-423d-9d02-1a898b2eb39f.mspx What I didn't know until I read the info in the above link is that using long filenames reduces the total number of root entries because long filenames span multiple root entries. I was definitely using long filenames on that Cruzer, but I have another 256MB Cruzer with 107 root entries consisting of 20 files and 87 folders. 73 of the root entries are long filenames. This is ~234MB used out of 249MB total formatted capacity. Apparently, I'm not the first person to run into the limitations of FAT16 on the Cruzer. Cruzer drives come formatted as FAT, which is FAT16. I couldn't find any restrictions on the number of root entries in FAT32. I plan to reformat my flaky Cruzer to FAT32 and then copy my FAT16 good Cruzer over to it. Nothing to lose by trying. If it works, I can make the flaky one read only and use the older one for R/W. I might try formatting the Cruzer to NTFS as well - WTH. _jim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Analyst Sent: Sunday, June 12, 2005 9:49 AM To: The Hardware List Subject: RE: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini On 11 Jun 2005 at 13:17, nobozoz wrote: Well, guess what. I was able to pull most of the important stuff off the Cruzer by repeatedly mounting the drive in WINXP and copying one root-based folder at a time. About 20 of the 34 or so root folders managed to make it to the HDD intact Not too shabby. the rest were lost because they couldn't be read at all - even partially. Ouch. Jim, Now that you listed the number of folders you had on the drive, it reminded me that my brother mentioned that a corporate IT guy where he works told him that the jump drives do not play well if they have too many files contained within too few folders. Something you might want to investigate. Does this make any sense to anyone ? Vince
RE: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini
What is the capacity? If you are keeping important documents on it that you don't have anywhere else (we all know that is bad practise anyway) then I would junk it and get a new one, they aren't that expensive these days. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of nobozoz Sent: 11 June 2005 21:18 To: The Hardware List Subject: RE: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini Well, guess what. I was able to pull most of the important stuff off the Cruzer by repeatedly mounting the drive in WINXP and copying one root-based folder at a time. About 20 of the 34 or so root folders managed to make it to the HDD intact, the rest were lost because they couldn't be read at all - even partially. Then, I reformatted the Cruzer as a FAT and ran CHKDSK on it and saved a few Folders to it - now it appears to be just like new. There was no loss of total capacity after the format either, so CHKDSK didn't find any bad sectors AFAIKT. I'm beginning to think this problem was due to WINXP aborting the write of a 6 MB PDF somewhere in the middle - that's what I was doing when all the trouble started, but I didn't get any warnings from XP that there was a specific problem with the Cruzer other than that the file-save was aborted. I wonder if I can continue to trust this drive now or not. I don't feel that lucky. _jim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Analyst Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 10:06 PM To: The Hardware List Subject: RE: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini On 10 Jun 2005 at 19:13, nobozoz wrote: Thanks for your response. The drive mounts fine - initially. It gets a drive letter OK; I can open 'some' folders and view files OK; but when I try to COPY, I get file read errors often enough to be a royal PITA. There is over 200 MB of files and folders on that Cruzer. Easily more than 2,000 files in about 34 folders at root level. Yeah, my brother has one with thousands of files on it as well, but he can't even get it to mount, and all the recovery software states that the jump drive must at least show up in My Computer for it to function. I took a look at 'BadCopy', but there's no way to tell if the 'recovered' files are corrupt or not. That's not good enough for me to open my wallet for. Their demo mode is akin to going to a dealership, watching a video and calling it a test drive before buying a car. I wasn't quite sure how that worked. They say it will tell you what files CAN be recovered, but the evaluation copy won't allow them to be copied, but I see what you mean, they could be copied and still be corrupted. Vince
RE: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini
At 06:34 PM 6/11/2005, Chris Reeves typed: I've had more pen drives die on me for seemingly no reason.. anymore, I just forget it. The only time I had one die was when I inserted one that was wired backwards. I know I shouldn't have trusted those other mom/pop shops in town. I keep a small (2.5) HDD in an external, USB powered case in the car if I need something bigger. I have the 20g HD that I took out my Dell L400 laptop in a USB powered case when I upgraded to the Seagate 5400rpm 40g drive but like you use CD/DVDs for most everything even tho I carry a 1g Sandisk Cruzer in my pants pocket all the time a 3½ CDR in my shirt pocket (because it has a small bootable BartPe on it) --+-- Wayne D. Johnson Ashland, OH, USA 44805 http://www.wavijo.com
[H] Crashing Cruzer Mini
Does anyone know how to get data off a crashing USB memory stick? The stick is sometimes recognized in WIN2K and when it is, I can see the basic directory structure, but I am unable to copy the files to my HDD due to a read error. Am I hosed? _jim
Re: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini
On 9 Jun 2005 at 23:08, nobozoz wrote: Does anyone know how to get data off a crashing USB memory stick? The stick is sometimes recognized in WIN2K and when it is, I can see the basic directory structure, but I am unable to copy the files to my HDD due to a read error. BadCopy Pro claims it can copy the files off the stick: http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/ Also, your jump drive may not be mounting correctly because another device is using the same drive letter as it has used in the past. The tell-tail sign is supposed to be that the jump drive will be visible in Unplug or Eject Hardware, but its file system will not visible in My Computer. You have to go into Admin Tools under Computer Management and use Storage Disk Management to re-assign the drive letter for the drive. Another solution you might want to try is to insert the USB drive while the computer is on, then reboot the machine and see if it's properly detected when it restarts. Vince
RE: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini
Thanks for your response. The drive mounts fine - initially. It gets a drive letter OK; I can open 'some' folders and view files OK; but when I try to COPY, I get file read errors often enough to be a royal PITA. There is over 200 MB of files and folders on that Cruzer. Easily more than 2,000 files in about 34 folders at root level. Admin tools is not the answer - I've B.T.D.T. ... W.N. Doesn't matter whether I boot the USB COLD, WARM, or not at all between read errors ... the damned thing has read errors after it mounts - the read errors come and go, too. Sometimes I can copy an entire folder (including sub folders), but if I try the exact same thing a second time, I may only get half the directory or even none of it and then the entire devise goes 'inaccessible'. Sometimes, the mere act of opening a folder once immediately after the drive is mounted is enough to make the data unstable. Most of this drive is Excel and Mathcad files along with raw data files - a squirrelly bit anywhere cannot be tolerated. I took a look at 'BadCopy', but there's no way to tell if the 'recovered' files are corrupt or not. That's not good enough for me to open my wallet for. Their demo mode is akin to going to a dealership, watching a video and calling it a test drive before buying a car. _jim -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Behalf Of Analyst Sent: Friday, June 10, 2005 5:47 AM To: The Hardware List Subject: Re: [H] Crashing Cruzer Mini On 9 Jun 2005 at 23:08, nobozoz wrote: Does anyone know how to get data off a crashing USB memory stick? The stick is sometimes recognized in WIN2K and when it is, I can see the basic directory structure, but I am unable to copy the files to my HDD due to a read error. BadCopy Pro claims it can copy the files off the stick: http://www.jufsoft.com/badcopy/ Also, your jump drive may not be mounting correctly because another device is using the same drive letter as it has used in the past. The tell-tail sign is supposed to be that the jump drive will be visible in Unplug or Eject Hardware, but its file system will not visible in My Computer. You have to go into Admin Tools under Computer Management and use Storage Disk Management to re-assign the drive letter for the drive. Another solution you might want to try is to insert the USB drive while the computer is on, then reboot the machine and see if it's properly detected when it restarts. Vince
