Memory Stick Problem: Valuable Clue?

[Gene Wirchenko]

Hello:

I wrote a while back about when I mount my USB memory stick on my
Windows 7 system, I sometimes see an error form.

Valuable? Clue: Sometimes, when I back up on the Windows 7 system
to the USB memory stick, it takes a long time to copy. Usually, it
takes just seconds, but occasionally, it takes a few minutes. (The
amount being copied is <200K on a 2GB stick.) It appears that when
this happens, that the next mount on the Windows 7 system results in
the error form. It does not matter if the stick is mounted on another
system in between the two Windows 7 mounts.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Paul]

Hello:

I wrote a while back about when I mount my USB memory stick on my
Windows 7 system, I sometimes see an error form.

Valuable? Clue: Sometimes, when I back up on the Windows 7 system
to the USB memory stick, it takes a long time to copy. Usually, it
takes just seconds, but occasionally, it takes a few minutes. (The
amount being copied is <200K on a 2GB stick.) It appears that when
this happens, that the next mount on the Windows 7 system results in
the error form. It does not matter if the stick is mounted on another
system in between the two Windows 7 mounts.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

While connected to another system, did you find any "funny files" ?

*******

And in order to see if there are any "funny files", you cannot
rely on Explorer for that. You need a utility that gives as "raw"
info as possible, ignoring attributes.

The closest I've come to that for NTFS file systems, is nfi.exe .
It will list everything, except the contents of System Volume Information,
which is Access Denied with other tools. Only Linux can look in there
(don't do it!).

(nfi.exe is in here... 3.6MB download, for a 21KB file)
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...win2000srv/Utility/3.0/NT45/EN-US/Oem3sr2.zip

I don't have any favorite tools for FAT32. I may have to write one

An older copy of Sysinternals "Contig" program, as in contig -v -a -s W:
can be used to list a partition. I find those arguments no longer allow
listing an entire partition, with a copy from 2012. I have several older
versions that still work, and you can probably figure out how to get an
older one, using archive.org .

(2012)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428

(older - could be from 2006 judging by Copyright string)
http://web.archive.org/web/20101225121345/http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428

With some of those utils, you want to Run As Admin, just for fun.

Contig was intended as a utility to detect fragmentation in files,
but I also use it as a disk listing utility. Redirected to a file,
and with some appropriate scripting cleanup, you can make a handy
file list with it.

contig2006 -v -a -s W: > output.txt

NFI goes a bit deeper than Contig does, but NFI only works for NTFS,
so is not the general purpose tool you might have liked.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Paul]

While connected to another system, did you find any "funny files" ?

*******

And in order to see if there are any "funny files", you cannot
rely on Explorer for that. You need a utility that gives as "raw"
info as possible, ignoring attributes.

The closest I've come to that for NTFS file systems, is nfi.exe .
It will list everything, except the contents of System Volume Information,
which is Access Denied with other tools. Only Linux can look in there
(don't do it!).

(nfi.exe is in here... 3.6MB download, for a 21KB file)
http://support.microsoft.com/defaul...win2000srv/Utility/3.0/NT45/EN-US/Oem3sr2.zip

I don't have any favorite tools for FAT32. I may have to write one

An older copy of Sysinternals "Contig" program, as in contig -v -a -s W:
can be used to list a partition. I find those arguments no longer allow
listing an entire partition, with a copy from 2012. I have several older
versions that still work, and you can probably figure out how to get an
older one, using archive.org .

(2012)
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428

(older - could be from 2006 judging by Copyright string)
http://web.archive.org/web/20101225121345/http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897428

With some of those utils, you want to Run As Admin, just for fun.

Contig was intended as a utility to detect fragmentation in files,
but I also use it as a disk listing utility. Redirected to a file,
and with some appropriate scripting cleanup, you can make a handy
file list with it.

contig2006 -v -a -s W: > output.txt

NFI goes a bit deeper than Contig does, but NFI only works for NTFS,
so is not the general purpose tool you might have liked.

HTH,
Paul

You could also be trying the fsutil check for the dirty bit, while
connected to the alternate system.

http://www.microsoft.com/resources/...all/proddocs/en-us/fsutil_dirty.mspx?mfr=true

Paul

 

[Char Jackson]

While connected to another system, did you find any "funny files" ?

*******

And in order to see if there are any "funny files", you cannot
rely on Explorer for that. You need a utility that gives as "raw"
info as possible, ignoring attributes.

The closest I've come to that for NTFS file systems, is nfi.exe .
It will list everything, except the contents of System Volume Information,
which is Access Denied with other tools. Only Linux can look in there
(don't do it!).

Why the warning? You can look in there all you want as long as you
don't change anything. There's nothing interesting, by the way.