Memory stick needs formatted after use in Debian?

[Tinov]

Hi,

I have a memory stick formatted FAT that was working okay with Windows XP and Vista. I needed to get some files off a Debian box so I plugged it in and it showed up okay. So I copy pasted a file (.doc made using openoffice) and a folder (lots of .doc and .odt inside) onto the stick. It seemed to go okay. Next I pulled it out of the Linux box, and put it into a Vista machine. It showed up as normal on the Vista machine, put the docs I was looking for were not there. So I put it back in the Debian box, and copy/pasted the files onto it again. This time I noticed that I could "unmount drive" so I did that before pulling the stick out of the Debian box (assuming it was along the lines of Windows "safely remove hardware"). Big mistake?

Now, when I put it in the Vista machine, it reports that it has to be formatted before use, and when I put it in the Debian machine it says "unable to mount drive".

What happened? Can I recover the files on it? What file system is best in this scenario - i.e. using a stick with linux and windows?

Thank you for reading (sorry to mention Windows so much).

Tinov

[devils casper]

You should have unmounted Mem Stick first time too. It looks like problem poped after not removing stick safely from Debian box.

FAT filesystem in fully supported in Linux and you should stick with that only. Try to mount stick manually in Debian.

[zen_dog]

could be the memory card. was it a cheap one? I had something similar happen to me turned out it was a cheap and nasty ebay jobbie memory card. you should always unmount it can corrupt the data

[Tinov]

It's an unbranded one, probably not the best on the market. Suspect it came from Maplin.