Just curious about a file on my thumb drive, it is not a problem but it changed from a file that was ok then to a file that changed the txt and file size and as well as the time stamp on it by about a hundred years, it was a just a maybe a 2Kb txt in notepad then turned into a 1Gb file size on a few of them, I think when I was going to copy it to my desktop I may have hit just make it a short cut from my thumb drive instead of the copy and paste command, I have tried to delete it and it wouldn't short of reformatting but will as soon as I transfer my good files over, has anyone had this happen ? and if so what happened ? it has me baffled. I have tried to rename it, delete it, open with several different programs but all was a no go, here is a snap shot of it below. It is green but it is not Encrypted, this paticular one shows 0 bytes but others are a 1GB or more about 50 and it is only a 16GB thumb drive. i can still save files to the thumb drive as well but only a couple of gigs are left on it.
Hi Doug and yes I am referring to my 16 gig PNY (not piny, typo) but it is a thumb (pen) drive and in Fat 32, I just have it to store files on like any thumb drive you have sitting around, I wish I could remember what happened before it happened but I don't, I havent saved my good files yet and then try formatting it but the file name looks like greek or machine language, thank you for the response, here is another one I took a screen shot of, it is just to weird…I like think I know my way around computers and virus free but that time stamp is like from the terminator or something, and it is 3 gigs in size, like I say there are dozens of these files on it like that…it may be just one of those mystery files. The file in my first post is Greek to the E symbol but this one looks like machine language and for sure I thought maybe I have seen it back in the DOS days like 6.6 or something…which I never knew anything about, I am just kind of hands on guy and I go for it.
Can't say that I have any experience with that particular type of Thumb Drive/file changing kind of behavior.
However, "something" is causing the changes of name, size and date.
You've probably already scanned that file and that drive with your onboard security utility and maybe even have used one of the reputable online scan utilities.
But if it were me, I'd hop on over to "Virus, Spyware & Malware Removal", to ask those professional folks for instruction to perform a full competent investigation and removal if indicated.
Looks like corruption to me. Could be caused by a virus… or simply be removing the thumb drive without first unmounting it.
Here is a pick from a few years ago of someones flash drive that happened to:
[external image: thishappenedtomyflashdrive.jpg]
The pick doesn't show the dates but it was my understanding that they were shown as 50 or 60 years in the future.
I have heard of a case where someone supposedly got mystery gibberish files on their thumb drive with strange dates and it turned out that somehow their system was using the thumb drive for swap file space. This is well over my head and understanding so I don't even have a suggestion as how to check that.
That looks like the same as mine exactly and thank you for the update and I have done all the above , I have used my thumb drive for my swap file instead of my HD and have also just taken it out without doing the safe removal method, but I live dangerously…lol, and do all sorts of things to Windows and my computer, I had just what you said in my back burner but needed a second opinion and I think this mystery is solved thanks to you, just to be sure I am going to replicate that procedure and see if it happens again
, I have used my thumb drive for my swap file instead of my HD and have also just taken it out without doing the safe removal method, but I live dangerously…lol, and do all sorts of things to Windows and my computer, I had just what you said in my back burner but needed a second opinion and I think this mystery is solved thanks to you, just to be sure I am going to replicate that procedure and see if it happens again 
