Vista and USB Drive

D

DamienThorn

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Nov 28, 2004
Messages
1,937
I've been using Vista since I got my new notebook about a month ago. While there are some nice things in Vista, there are others that I'm not a big fan of/don't fully understand yet. I'm here with a question regarding the former.

I have an Apacer USB Thumb drive (2GB) that sporatically looses all of its data when I put it in my Vista laptop. The data isn't fully deleted, as the space is still in use, and so I have to format the damn thing on a weekly basis now, which is remarkably less than convenient. I have dozens of XP computers in my office at work, and I'm not experiencing any problems using the drive in them. Anyone know what I might be running into?

 
If you stick it in the Vista machine, it "messes" with it, and then stick in it an XP machine- can you still see everything?
 
If the issues exist on both XP and Vista machines, I'd say it's patently obvious the USB drive has a defect.
 
I think the OP was trying to say that Vista seems to wipe the drive, or at least make the data inaccessible, and the data is still missing if inserted into an XP machine. My reading of what is described indicates that none of the XP computers is harming the drive...

Assuming I'm reading this correctly, a few other questions:
1. Does this happen regardless of which USB port on the laptop you use?
2. Is this an issue only when moving a drive that was in XP to Vista, or does it happen if you use it on your laptop, take it out, and then put it back in?
3. Are you safely removing the thumb drive each time, or just yanking it out?
 
When you plug the flash drive into your laptop does Vista ask you if you would like to scan and fix it? I still have RC2 on my desktop and it always asks me that when I plug in my flash drive but I just tell it not to and have had no problems.
 
Are you properly removing the device, or are you pulling it out of the laptop without stopping the service first?
 
Another question- does it just happen on the one drive?

I've NEVER used the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature for my drives. Never. Granted, if I am dumping a file to sombody else's drive, I do because people generally prefer it, but I have never had any sort of problem just yanking it out- I've never seen anyone have a problem, either.

That being said, whenever I made a copy of something I want to be sure is good, I will use the feature "just in case".
 
zacdl said:
Another question- does it just happen on the one drive?

I've NEVER used the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature for my drives. Never. Granted, if I am dumping a file to sombody else's drive, I do because people generally prefer it, but I have never had any sort of problem just yanking it out- I've never seen anyone have a problem, either.

That being said, whenever I made a copy of something I want to be sure is good, I will use the feature "just in case".
Click to expand...

It depends how you have the drive set up. If it is set for (or defaults to) Optimize for performance, this enables write caching. If you yank it out too soon after moving files to it or any other activity occurs, it may not have compelted the operation, meaning you've just corrupted the file (and possibly the file structure).
 
LhasaCM said:
I think the OP was trying to say that Vista seems to wipe the drive, or at least make the data inaccessible, and the data is still missing if inserted into an XP machine. My reading of what is described indicates that none of the XP computers is harming the drive...

Assuming I'm reading this correctly, a few other questions:
1. Does this happen regardless of which USB port on the laptop you use?
2. Is this an issue only when moving a drive that was in XP to Vista, or does it happen if you use it on your laptop, take it out, and then put it back in?
3. Are you safely removing the thumb drive each time, or just yanking it out?
Click to expand...

You've managed to phrase things more effectively that I have. As for your questions:

(1) yep; my 1210 have 4 USB ports and all four of them seem to generate the same problem
(2) Happens when I remove the USB drive from my Vista computer and reinsert it into the same computer.
(3) Most of the time I've just yanked it out but, in case that was the cause, I started using the safetly eject option - even when safetly ejecting it I get the same problem

 
zacdl said:
Another question- does it just happen on the one drive?

I've NEVER used the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature for my drives. Never. Granted, if I am dumping a file to sombody else's drive, I do because people generally prefer it, but I have never had any sort of problem just yanking it out- I've never seen anyone have a problem, either.

That being said, whenever I made a copy of something I want to be sure is good, I will use the feature "just in case".
Click to expand...

Happens on multiple drives - I got rid of 4GB of data that my co-worker had on her USB drive...she was noticably less than impressed.

 
I'm thinking AutoPlay... I don't know what else would be running on that without you doing anything.

What kind of AutoPlay settings do you have set on there?
 
When I saw this thread earlier, the very first thought that came to mind was possibly ReadyBoost causing some issues. I can't lock down why I had that thought now, after several hours, sooo... now it's bugging me. :)

If I come up with the reason it nagged me the first time and I think it's related, I'll post what I'm kinda leaning towards... or something like that.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
When I saw this thread earlier, the very first thought that came to mind was possibly ReadyBoost causing some issues. I can't lock down why I had that thought now, after several hours, sooo... now it's bugging me. :)

If I come up with the reason it nagged me the first time and I think it's related, I'll post what I'm kinda leaning towards... or something like that.
Click to expand...

I know the feeling - I have it too. I just can't think of a good reason to support that suspicion...
 
Yea, but has ReadyBoost ever been used on this system?

Like I asked before... what kind of AutoPlay settings do you have set?
 
zacdl said:
Yea, but has ReadyBoost ever been used on this system?

Like I asked before... what kind of AutoPlay settings do you have set?
Click to expand...

(1) Ready boost has been used on the system with the usb drive in question
(2)
Autoplay.jpg
 
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