anomalous USB stick behaviour

[abelito8]

Hi everyone,

I am puzzled, I experienced the same problems with more than 1 USB stick (a sony and a kingston)...is that a bug?
The pattern is the following:

The USB became read-only in Ubuntu (9.04) after I used them on a windows computer (XP and Vista). After I used them I could open the files in Ubuntu but neither copy them nor transfer any more files into them.

In windows they worked normally

I tried to format them with Gparted but it was not possible, it gives a generic error

I formatted them in a windows computer and restored the original parameters (FAT32) and it worked fine, I could even transfer some files from windows into Linux

Today I tried to transfer them again, after copying the file in windows I insert the stick into my laptop and it said that the files I copied were corrupted and impossible to copy. Then the stick became read-only again and to make it work in Ubuntu I will need to format them again...

Anyone who solved a similar problem or can help?
Thank you in advance

[Rubberman]

This is usually indicative of removing the drive before all data written to it has been flushed from the system's memory buffers. You need to do the "safe remove" thing on Windows, as well as on Linux in order to be sure that the drive doesn't get corrupted when you pull it out. I've had this happen to me also and learned this lesson the hard way.

[abelito8]

Thank you for your reply, the problem is that I had been told this and yesterday I took care of using the safely remove command from windows but the result was the same...
and now I remarked it happened also with my Creative (with which windows does not give the option "safely remove") and I cannot copy files anymore to it...

[Rubberman]

Thank you for your reply, the problem is that I had been told this and yesterday I took care of using the safely remove command from windows but the result was the same...
and now I remarked it happened also with my Creative (with which windows does not give the option "safely remove") and I cannot copy files anymore to it...

Your Creaative what? USB drive? Anyway, it is sounding like there might be some problem with the USB controller hardware on your system. It might be reporting that everything was written, but it wasn't. Is this a laptop, or a desktop computer? A lot of desktop systems (and some laptops) have dual USB controllers. If you can plug into a USB port on the other controller, you might find that you don't have this problem. I have heard of similar problems on occasion.

[abelito8]

Thank you for your reply Rubberman

with Creative I meant Zen Creative, a MP3 player

I am working on a laptop, how may I check if I have dual USB controllers? And if not is there another way?

As for writing errors, I have tried on a windows and the USB devices work fine, but on my Ubuntu they do not, neither they do on the small Acer I have which has Linups Lite

but if I plug them back into a windows then they work...

so disappointing even to think that Windows seems to give less problem with this...

[Rubberman]

Well, I use USB drives frequently to move data between WIndows and Linux and haven't had this problem, except under the circumstances mentioned.

[abelito8]

Thank you for the suggestion, I am taking maximum care and it seems to work...
hope will go on like this

[CT_Wiebe]

abelito8 -- Windows XP and Windows Vista handle USB memory sticks differently.

In XP, you click on the "Safely remove" icon and then select the ISB "drive". When it replys "You can safely remove the Drive" you can then do so.

In Vista, you start out the same way. However, you cannot remove the USB stick until AFTER you click on the "OK" button in the "You can Safely Remove" pop-up window. If you remove the USB stick before you click on "OK" and the window closes, the USB stick will no longer work under Linux.

I found this out the hard way. Fortunately, I could always put the USB stick in one of my XP PCs, and recover. Then I could do the "safely Remove" routine, and then it would work fine in my Ubuntu laptop.

NOTE: USB memory sticks should always be formatted as FAT32. Otherwise you can run into problems using it on both Windows & Linux PCs. At least, that is what I have read in all the Community Forums.

[D-cat]

NOTE: USB memory sticks should always be formatted as FAT32. Otherwise you can run into problems using it on both Windows & Linux PCs. At least, that is what I have read in all the Community Forums.

I've run USB sticks as FAT16 and ext2. As with just about any disk, Linux doesn't seem to really care, it's only Windows that pitches a fit when the stick isn't formatted FAT32.

Reading that from a logic standpoint though, the statement is correct.

[Rubberman]

I've formatted USB sticks fat32, ntfs, and ext2/ext3. For Linux only, ext2 is preferred. For Windows, either fat32 or ntfs is fine and Linux will handle either, though for ntfs formatted file systems you need the ntfs-3g drivers in Linux to be able to write to them.