Corrupt data on USB thumb drive

[Lori Schirmer]

Writing fairly large zip files (330-600M) to thumb drives.
Data is corrupt (all zeros after a certain point in the file,
confirmed with a hex editor).
I'm not finding any information on the web about failures
either with the hardware and/or limitations WRT to
size of files.

I know that the utility creating the data is good
because if I write the data to a different network drive
it's readable.

Any ideas??

 

[ddrueding]

Sounds like a faulty thumb drive. I had similar corruption on some I bought super-cheap from a street vendor in China. It looks fine and the copy goes fine, but when you go to access it the data is simply not there. I kinda figured that it happened when they put in the memory controller for a large sized memory module and but in a smaller one.

A way to test this theory would be to use many smaller files and see where the corruption occurs. If it's always at about the same capacity, you probably have your cause.

Have you tried thi with multiple thumbdrives? From multiple vendors? In multiple computers? Just things to try if they are convinent.

Also, I'd think this probably belongs in the "Computers" forum.

Oh, and welcome Lori!

 

[Mercutio]

Most thumb drives are formatted as FAT32 and will therefore support file sizes of either 2GB or 4GB depending on the application and OS in question. You normally would not have problems with sub-1GB files unless there is some kind of external issue.

Were I to guess, I'd say you've got some bad memory either in your thumb drives (there is more than one?) or your PC's physical RAM, but of course that's difficult to verify. If you write and copy a large ZIP on some other PC, is it OK?
What about copying over some other type of large file, such as a .ISO?

 

[mubs]

In addition to the suggestions above, consider this:

Didn't many early USB chipsets have this problem? Large transfers getting corrupted? Of course in those days large thumb drives weren't available and people used hard disks in external enclosures with USB interfaces.

If you can test this with an external USB disk drive and still experience corruption, it's hardware (thumb drive / RAM / USB chipset). First rule out a driver issue by making sure you're using the latest.

It would help if you listed your OS and make & model of motherboard / RAM / thumbdrive.

 

[Lori Schirmer]

Thanks for the many replies.

We have tried various thumb drives (different vendors, different capacities)
and so far, all present us with corrupt data. At least one that we've
been using is very new (it's mine).

OS/hw: IBM x345 servers running Win2000 server. This is the
config where the file is created prior to being copied to the thumb drive.
We have read the file on various systems (x345, office desktop).

We have done limited experimentation using a USB harddrive.
The data was fine on that device.

We'll be doing more today. I'll update this post with our findings.

 

[Handruin]

What does the power usage look like on your root hub USB controller under device manager in win2k? Check the power usage with and without the thumb drive connected to see if it requires more than your IBM can provide. An external hard drive would likely be self powered and not by the USB port.

 

[Sol]

Do you get the same problem if you write the file out to a hard drive and then just copy it across? What sort of utility is doing the writing? You could try changing the settings for fast removal... I don't know why that would cause this but it seems like something that might differ between the usb drive and other devices you've worked with.

 

[MaxBurn]

I have had some weird issues with UPS thumb drives and windows 2000. I have one customer that the drive will mount, be shown in Device Manager and Disk Management with a drive letter but you are unable to get into the drive without a reboot of the system with no way around it that I could find. Sometimes it plain won't remove properly either after stopping the drive the data, if still being written, will be either corrupt or not there entirely when it should have simply said the device can't be removed right now. I have not seen this weirdness on any XP or 03 box.

 

[mubs]

For about 3+ years, I used USB thumb drives on a W2k Pro system without a single hitch - no data corruption, no problems seeing the drives or removing them. My OS was always up to date. My thumb drives were all brand names (mostly Lexar). Largest one was 1 GB. Motherboard was a Tyan Tiger BX chipset, but I was using an Adaptec 3-port USB 2.0 PCI card since the onboard ports were USB 1.1 only. I used the drivers that came with the PCI card.

 

[MaxBurn]

For about 3+ years, I used USB thumb drives on a W2k Pro system without a single hitch.

Yeah, I suspect not all my customers are up to date or maybe even have the right drivers but there isn't anything I can do about it. My drives are all either Sandisk or PNY. You are right though, some of those systems were flawless.