right/wrong way to put files/folders on flash disk?

I have bought several flash drives, some 16 gb and some 32 gb. These are mainly for music videos (mpegs) & wav/mp3 files. In total I have 6 x16 gb and have tried to put files on all of them to test them. I put a folder on with 6 gb of mpegs containing 306 files. The most any of the drives showed was 115 files and of those only 73 played. I formatted all of them before using them. I have 3 x32 gb. Just now I put a folder of audio files (wavs) on it containing 5.46 gb and 190 files. 190 files showed as being on the drive, but of these, only 50 files would open and the 51st file played half way and then disappeared. I haven't tried the other 2 x32 gb yet as this seems to be happening with all of the drives so far. All the files transferred play perfectly from their folders on the internal & external drives. All in all I have about 15 or so folders I want to put on these drives, so I need to know exactly how to do that. I have tried copy & paste and 'send to' , both ways using windows explorer. I take it I am doing something wrong - somewhere. Is there some other way I should be doing this? I'm getting near the end of my tether. Thanks for reading and in advance for any help offered. hedley

Hi Hedley… Are you "safely removing hardware," before you unplug the flash drive from the computer? Also, flashdrives will probably be FAT32 and that will limit your filesize to 2Gb. If you try to transfer a video to the drive that is over 2Gb it will not work. You may be able to format them NTFS and resolve some of your problems.

Thanks for the reply. Another silly question: Do you know how I can format them to NTFS. The only option given on the format properties is FAT32 and can't be changed. Thanks for the help. hedley

That's a great question actually.

I did some research on this. It appears that WindowsXP will not easily let you format a USB drive as NTFS. However, I made a mistake on the filesize limit I told you. It isn't 2GB, it is 4GB for FAT32. There really isn't any reason to format your drive NTFS unless you are trying to store files on it that are over 4GB in size (that means one individual file is greater than 4GB in size).

The interesting thing is that as these flash drives get bigger, at some point it appears FAT32 may not be sufficient for them anymore.

Here is a link to some information about the limits of the various types of file systems: http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm

Unless you have files larger than 4GB lets not worry about NTFS. Instead, lets focus on why the files aren't transferring to the drive right.

Thanks for the reply and for that very interesting reading material. I have it bookmarked for future reference. I don't think this is going to work at all. I spent yesterday narrowing a 4.3 gb folder of music down to 3.00 gb (123 files) which is what the drive played when I tried to put 3.64 gb on it using copy & paste. I then put that folder onto the flash drive using copy & paste. It would only play 100 files. Proceeded to cut my folder down to match the gb worth that it played. Again, used copy & paste. On the status bar 100 files showed as being on the drive. After safely removing hardware I reinserted the flash drive. There were 73 files on the drive, of which 59 played. I noticed on checking the properties that the Attributes were at Archive, whereas on the hard drive they are Read Only. Showed 2.34 gb as being on the disk, but only 1.95 opened. Tried a second time using Send To on explorer. After transferring about 15 or so files I got a message up saying there was 'A violation at address 0000000000. Read of address 00000000. Violation at address FFFFFFFF. Read of address FFFFFFFF'. This message I have noticed just lately if I use explorer by right clicking on the start menu and using explorer that way. This has only started to show up over the last fortnight or so, but not every time. Maybe this drive and the others are these fake drives I've been reading about. Supposedly, they are only 2.00 gb and not 16 gb as advertised. I will maybe try formatting them to ntfs and see what happens. Thanks again for the help. Much appreciated, as always. hedley Just an after thought. I am using a usb external drive which is formatted to ntfs, as are all my drives, usb, internal & external. Would this be anything to do with why this isn't working?

Well, that didn't work either. 'Windows was unable to complete format' was the message I got when trying to format to ntfs. What about the possibility of files on ntfs drives not transferring properly to fat32 drives? I put a full 4.3 gb of files that I had converted to mp3 onto the drive last night and every file transferred and played and stayed on the drive even after removing and plugging in again. When converted the folder was only 539 mb. Tried again with just a few mpegs, but they still didn't all open. Only 1.95 gb would open. The message I got after that was that the player may not support the codec used on the mpeg, but they were all done the same way. Grateful for any other comments you may have. Thanks for the help. hedley

I put a full 4.3 gb of files that I had converted to mp3 onto the drive last night and every file transferred and played and stayed on the drive even after removing and plugging in again. When converted the folder was only 539 mb.

I'm not exactly sure what you mean here?

It definitely sounds like there is some corruption taking place on the flash drive. How many drives are giving you problems and are they all the same kind?

Thanks for the reply. Sorry for any confusion. I always put approx 4.0 - 4.2 gb of .wav files in each of my folders because a dvd can hold 4.3 gb of material. The number of files in each folder can vary depending on the length of each track, each folder holds between 305-358 files. This is what I meant in my last post. I converted one of these folders into mp3 files which brought the folder size down to 539 mb and put it on the flash drive. I checked every track on the flash drive and all of them opened and played ok. When I removed the drive and connected it again all the songs were still there and played. I put 100 .wav files onto the flash drive, (3.02 gb). On checking the files I found they were all there in order until they got to S. Although it said 100 files were copied, in fact 20 songs did not transfer. A-R were all there. The next file read SHAN~~. Then the next file started at W on to Z, the files between S-W were not there and only 59 files opened and played in wav form. I have 3 x16gb and 3 x32gb. Been that busy with the 16's that I haven't checked the 32's yet. Attached is a picture of the packet 7 of them came in (4 x16gb & 3 x32 gb). This is written on the back of it: 'Micro Vault contains a system management area. The capacity that can actually be USed(user area)on a 128MB-8G Micro Vault is approximately 124MB-7984MB'. This is written on the back of the 16 gb cases, but not the 32 gb which only gives the first sentence above. The other 3 x16gb did not have a packaging. I looked up 'Micro Vault' on google. Most results seemed to reference Sony as being the manufacturer. Hope this makes some sense. If not, please ask for more info. Thanks again for the help. hedley 📎usb_drive_cover.jpg

… This is written on the back of it: 'Micro Vault contains a system management area. …'[external image: attachicon.gif]usb_drive_cover.jpg&&0){for(var>

 

OK, I'm only 7 years late in replying, sorry! I'm replying in case others come across this thread.

 

Those are fake (counterfeit) USB flash drives. They are labelled as and report one size, but actually contain much less memory. Anything written beyond the actual memory doesn't actually get written anywhere, with no error message reporting it. A 32GB drive might actually contain 2-4GB of actual memory.

 

That picture is fairly typical of the ones that fake USB drives come in. Note that there is no brand name, no bar code, no address, nothing identifying the company that distributed it.