Storage forum: Dead flash drives? What's going on here?!

Paul, you may have noticed that annoying little icon on your taskbar--the one most people ignore that says "safely Remove Hardware". It has a purpose, especially with Thumb (Flash) drives. By default, Windows disables write-caching when it recognizes a new thumb drive. This allows the drive to be disconnected without using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon, but also severely slows down the drive. I have seen drives that, for some reason by default, have write-caching enabled from the start. It is very possible to have your Data corrupted if you do not use the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon when removing a Thumb drive with write-caching enabled . It's simple enough to find out if write-caching is enabled. In "My Computer", right-click on the Thumb drive icon and choose "Properties", then "Hardware" and then highlight your Thumb drive and again select "Properties". Lastly, click the "Policies" tab. You will see two options in this box, one for "Optimize for quick removal" and the other "Optimize for Performance". Normally windows defaults a new Thumb drive to "Optimize for quick removal", but I have also seen this NOT to be the case. If your drive is "Optimized for Performance", and you unplug the drive at will, you can easily get problems exactly as you are describing. This may or may not be the case with you, but I think it's the number one starting point to look at.

Care must be exercised in using flash drives or "memory sticks" on PC's. The first and most obvious rule is to know what the USB requirements of the Flash Drive are and what type of USB the PC offers. If the Flash drive requires USB 2 but the PC only has USB 1, then you need to obtain a USB hub to interface your Flash Drive properly.

Secondly, be patient. Give the PC time to properly read the Flash Drive before attempting to write new files to it. Opening the files after they have been written to the Flash Drive may help to ensure that they have been properly saved.

Most importantly: make sure you properly prepare the Flash Drive for removal before removing it from the USB socket. This can be accomplished by locating the icon on the task bar which carries the flag "safely remove hardware." If you cannot locate that icon, then the safest thing to do is shut down Windows prior to removing the Flash Drive.

And don't take one computer's word that the Flash Drive is unreadable, or needs formatting. As was the case with diskettes,
one PC may occasionally not recognize a device written by another PC. Rebooting the PC with the Flash Drive in the socket may correct the problem. If that doesn't work, shut down the PC and try the Flash Drive again in the PC that originally created the files.

Leo Toribio

flash drive failure - also can be the usb reader on them. in some instances the flash drive has a special usb device helper file for accessing put in by the manufacturer. in some cases this file conflicts with the one on the user's machine making it not able to access the flash drive. i cannot remember the file name but it has to do with a usb something accessing file that is usually on user's machine. renaming this file temporarily will possibly allow the flash drive's version to allow access.

flash drives are known to not be 100% fool proof. Always back up on cd's. I purchase inexpensive cd's for this for peace of mind

I used to have the same problems when removing and reinstalling flash drives. At first I was just using the SAFELY REMOVE HARDWARE ICON but when I connect it back, the drive is non-existent. So what I did was reboot the computer and the flash drive came back. But rebooting takes a lot of time so I just put the computer in STAND BY mode, then connect or reconnect the flash drive. Then by pressing any key or moving the mouse, my computer springs back to life and the flash drive is always there ready for reading or writing. Since then I did not have any trouble with the flash drives.

I've had similar problems with various motherboards and usb hardware. 1st off, make sure you have the most current mobo drivers, particularly USB. Some flash drives require their own drivers. Double check drive manufacturers site. While there be sure to glance through generic and device specific faqs. The data shouldn't be lost. Do try to find a machine that recognizes each of the drives and immediately back up the files. Secondarily check motherboard faqs as there are addressability issues but they usually don't come into play until you get into the hundreds of gigabyte sizes. Plug and pray has come a long way but has a ways to go. Today an actiontec dsl modem plugged into USB port caused my machine to request TI drivers. No TI chips on mobo and none shown in modem specs. Go figger.

I use sandisk 4GB flash cards which come with an adapter which turns them into a flash drive. They also come with a recovery disk which is a mini CD which contains SanDisk RescuePRO. This is data recovery for any memory card format. I suggest you obtain one of these. Flash drives fail all the time as you say work one day and not the next. Hope you find this helpful.
M. A. Laycock

I have found my built in card reader to be hit or miss, especially as the memory of the card increases, and also from card manufacturer to manufacturer. The add-on card readers have been more reliable. I am guessing that they are more current in technology.

You really was not specific as to the problem(s) of the flash drives. I will address the issue of the flash drive becoming "write-protected", wherein you can see what is on the drive, and copy from it, but NOT onto it.The Registry fix for this follows:
Re: Problem with USB flash drive-"Write Protected"
There is a simple solution for thisin the case of windows.
Just do a "regedit" for StorageDevicePolicies key. . Get
into the Registry - Press Start ->Run, enter regedit, press Ok
Click on My Computer. Then press File Export, give some file
name to backup the registry. Just in caseyou ever need to rollback.
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/StorageDevicePolicies .
In the right pane select "writeprotect" . RESET the value to '0' Repeat
the same for ControlSet001 and ControlSet002 incase they exist. Now plug
in your USB drives and it should work. Else just reboot the machine and try. This works great! Hope it helps.

sometimes when I want to remove my flash drive I get the message " the device 'generic volume' cannot be stopped right now. Try stopping the device again later"
So then I try stopping it later but still come up with the same message so then I just take it out....luckily all my docs are still there when I plug it back in the next day....this only happens after I've been on the internet for a couple of hours but if I have not been on the internet and just been on my desktop I can take it out without that annoying message...my question is why is this happening sometimes??

Sorry, Paul. I've not had any problems. I used to use a Bytestor 1gb flash drive, now a 4gb PNG cheapo flash drive. I've used these in an old Toshiba laptop and a new-ish Dell laptop both running Windows XP SP2; also in a new-ish Dell laptop running Vista Home Premium. I've exchanged data with friends systems, both desktop and laptop all running XP Home and Pro.

On inserting the drive, I wait for Windows to tell me it's "ready for use" or whatever phrase it uses before I start any copying. My habit on removing the drive is to go into Windows Explorer, check that the right data is stored on the flash drive, then right mouse click on the drive and choose "safely remove" (on Vista), then wait for it to say I can take it out.

I must confess I've not used flash drives extensively, I would guess a few dozen transfers in total. Both flash drives still work fine and I've never had a data corruption or inaccessible data.

Finally, I never use them as the sole location for data, only for a copy or for data transfer between systems. I don't trust myself not to lose them!

Never thought about software on the system. I've used the free version of AVG anti-virus on my Vista laptop since day one; I uninstalled the supplied McAfee. Nothing too deep in the system apart from that.

I run AVG Free on our XP systems also after a while. Friends systems I've connected to were on a variety, including Norton, AVG and McAfee.

Try inserting the flash drives before turning on the PC. If problem gets solved, its due to port addressing.

I had similar problems with my 6 year old laptop. The problem went away when I flash upgraded the bios in the computer.
I hope this helps. Jim

Paul, you have become a victim of the Dreaded DLA (Drive Letter Assignment) phenomenon.

Most flash drives nowadays have all sorts of fun stuff on them as well as just the storage. Additionally, most flash drives are made for Windows XP users... because they dominate the landscape. Because of this, the Boot of the drives are often for Windows XP and the drive is often formatted in NTFS.

Vista PCs will recognize the drive, but most times will boot and run the software in emulation... slowly in emulation... so you think you have a defective flash drive. Sometimes, the Vista DLA doesn't "like" the XP DLA boot on the drive, so they fight. As you can imagine, the PC OS wins sometimes, the flash Drive Boot OS wins sometimes. Either way, you win some and you lose some.

However, XP PCs are not immune to this. Depending on whether you "Hot Plug", boot the machine from the drive, boot the machine and then run the boot of the flash drive, or sometimes you have no control over who is running the DLAs, you get the problems you are running across.

Don't get me started on Linux, Unix and Solaris machines. Most Windows 98 machines will never see the drive without a software upgrade. Windows NT and 2000 machines (yes, they are still out there) often don't see these flash drives either unless you boot the machine with the USB drive plugged in.

Interestingly enough, we've found Intel Macs NEVER have a problem with ANY USB flash drives.
What can I say?

So there, a mess and still NO DISCUSSION about what happens when your Anti-Virus and Firewall detect a foreign Application starting up.

We usually end up erasing and formatting the drive to match that of the PC (usually NTFS) and install our own utilities (if you need some). Usually ... (usually, not always), this works best.
BTW: There's an excellent video on CNET on how to install your own OS and apps on a flash drive you might want to look at.