Stupid Error Message of the Day

[Gene Wirchenko]

Dear Win7ers:

I just got the following error message during an xcopy:

xcopy.exe - Corrupt File
The file or directory \CBS3Dev\try5a.html is corrupt and
unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility.

It would have been a good idea to state which drive, right?

As it turns out, it is the destination drive. I know this,
because the directory structure is different, but if it had not been,
I would not have known which drive to check.

The issue is with the USB stick that has been giving me some
trouble and that I have posted about other times.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Ken Blake]

The issue is with the USB stick that has been giving me some
trouble and that I have posted about other times.

Unless it's a very big thumb drive, why not just throw it away and buy
a new one. They're pretty cheap.

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

Unless it's a very big thumb drive, why not just throw it away and buy
a new one. They're pretty cheap.

I would rather not toss out good hardware, but now that I finally
have had a hard error, that is looking to be the thing to do.

Scale of Hardware Liking (descending):
Hardware that works
Hardware that does not work
Hardware that maybe works

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[choro]

Unless it's a very big thumb drive, why not just throw it away and buy
a new one. They're pretty cheap.

Viagra or Cialis might work wonders with hardware that's gone soft! --
choro
*****

 

[Ed Cryer]

I would rather not toss out good hardware, but now that I finally
have had a hard error, that is looking to be the thing to do.

Scale of Hardware Liking (descending):
Hardware that works
Hardware that does not work
Hardware that maybe works

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Don't get one of those thumb drives which have the retractable USB plug.
They're often intermittently dodgy. I bought a 32GB one recently and it
worked on one computer always, on another most of the time, on another
only now and then.
This is it;
http://www.ryman.co.uk/1405267001/SanDisk-Cruzer-Edge-USB-Flash-Drive-32GB/Product
I've now put it in the bin.

Ed

 

[Dave-UK]

Don't get one of those thumb drives which have the retractable USB plug.
They're often intermittently dodgy. I bought a 32GB one recently and it
worked on one computer always, on another most of the time, on another
only now and then.
This is it;
http://www.ryman.co.uk/1405267001/SanDisk-Cruzer-Edge-USB-Flash-Drive-32GB/Product
I've now put it in the bin.

Ed

I had a ScanDisk Cruzer for a short time and I could never get it to boot consistently.
That also ended up in the bin.

 

[Ed Cryer]

I had a ScanDisk Cruzer for a short time and I could never get it to
boot consistently.
That also ended up in the bin.

On the other hand this Lexar 32 GB drive has been with me for almost a
year, never failed on the three computers mentioned above, and deserves
a score of 100/100 by my experience.
http://tinyurl.com/8fkdxuf

Ed

 

[Ken Blake]

Don't get one of those thumb drives which have the retractable USB plug.
They're often intermittently dodgy. I bought a 32GB one recently and it
worked on one computer always, on another most of the time, on another
only now and then.

I have two 16GB Kingston thumb drives of that type. I've never had a
problem with either of them.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

I had a ScanDisk Cruzer for a short time and I could never get it to boot consistently.
That also ended up in the bin.

On the other side of the coin, I've really liked the SanDisk Cruzers
I've owned (standard model found here
<http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/drives/cruzer/>, not the Edge. I
have one 8GB for personal use, one 16GB for company use, and gave one
8GB to each of my children. All of them have worked flawlessly for the
past almost two years that we've had them. They are all set up as
Hiren Boot devices and get used extensively for this purpose as well as
for data storage and transfer. I like the retractable USB plug since
it means I don't have to keep track of a cap or fiddle with a swiveling
protector for the plug.

YMMV, but these have been the best USB flash drives I've owned.

 

[Dave-UK]

On the other side of the coin, I've really liked the SanDisk Cruzers
I've owned (standard model found here
<http://www.sandisk.com/products/usb/drives/cruzer/>, not the Edge. I
have one 8GB for personal use, one 16GB for company use, and gave one
8GB to each of my children. All of them have worked flawlessly for the
past almost two years that we've had them. They are all set up as
Hiren Boot devices and get used extensively for this purpose as well as
for data storage and transfer. I like the retractable USB plug since
it means I don't have to keep track of a cap or fiddle with a swiveling
protector for the plug.

YMMV, but these have been the best USB flash drives I've owned.

Hirens Boot... doesn't that use Grub4Dos or something to create a bootable
usb drive? I use UltraIso to create a bootable Windows usb drive from an
iso image and trying to boot from the Cruzer often gave me problems.
Perhaps I was just unlucky.

 

[Ed Cryer]

Hirens Boot... doesn't that use Grub4Dos or something to create a
bootable usb drive? I use UltraIso to create a bootable Windows usb
drive from an iso image and trying to boot from the Cruzer often gave me
problems.
Perhaps I was just unlucky.

I find it odd that Zaphod speaks so highly of retractable ones because
I've had trouble with several over the years.

There are three different types I've used;
1. Removable plastic cap
2. Swivel into retaining half
3. Retractable.

The first two have a similar open USB plug; and both work well for me.
It's the last type that I'm now avoiding at all costs, but unfortunately
they're becoming more the norm (probably cheaper to produce in these
straightened times of ours!).

The USB plug part on the Cruzer Edge has to be seen to be believed. It's
just so fragile (only three sides to it) that bad contact seems inevitable.

Ed

 

[Dale Arends]

[ Some deleted stuff. ]

I had a ScanDisk Cruzer for a short time and I could never get it to
boot consistently. That also ended up in the bin.

I have had a lot of problems with SanDisk Cruzer thumb drives. In long file
transfers they have sporadically unmounted themselves and won't remount
until after a reboot of the machine. I have dropped SanDisk from my
purchase list and gone to PNY Attache drives and not had any problems (so
far).

- Dale

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Hirens Boot... doesn't that use Grub4Dos or something to create a bootable
usb drive? I use UltraIso to create a bootable Windows usb drive from an
iso image and trying to boot from the Cruzer often gave me problems.
Perhaps I was just unlucky.

I've not looked into what Hirens boot uses but it is for sure one of
the Linux boot loaders. I'm not familiar enough with them to identify
them by name though. However, I have used the 16GB Cruzer to create
the Win 8 installer which uses Win PE, and I've used a older 4GB and
the 8GB Cruzers upon occasion as a Linux boot device using syslinux
(again, not sure of the actual bootloader) as well as pure DOS (6.2, 7,
and PCDOS some version or other) and have never had issue making them
work.

Not sure if you were unlucky or I was lucky, but that's my experience
in a nutshell.

 

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Hirens Boot... doesn't that use Grub4Dos or something to create a
bootable usb drive? I use UltraIso to create a bootable Windows usb
drive from an iso image and trying to boot from the Cruzer often gave me
problems.
Perhaps I was just unlucky.

I find it odd that Zaphod speaks so highly of retractable ones because
I've had trouble with several over the years.

There are three different types I've used;
1. Removable plastic cap
2. Swivel into retaining half
3. Retractable.

The first two have a similar open USB plug; and both work well for me.
It's the last type that I'm now avoiding at all costs, but unfortunately
they're becoming more the norm (probably cheaper to produce in these
straightened times of ours!).

The USB plug part on the Cruzer Edge has to be seen to be believed. It's
just so fragile (only three sides to it) that bad contact seems inevitable.
[/QUOTE]

Looking at the Edge I'm not sure I'd trust it either. The standard
Cruzer is much more robust. Really, it is a standard USB drive plug
with a slightly larger outer shell that slides around a slightly
smaller inner plastic shell.

--
Zaphod

Arthur: All my life I've had this strange feeling that there's
something big and sinister going on in the world.
Slartibartfast: No, that's perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the
universe gets that.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In message <[email protected]>, Ed Cryer

Don't get one of those thumb drives which have the retractable USB
plug. They're often intermittently dodgy. I bought a 32GB one recently
and it worked on one computer always, on another most of the time, on
another only now and then.

[]
If it works always in one computer, then perhaps the other one (or the
drive) is marginally outside the specification mechanically (i. e. just
not always quite making reliable contact), rather than being
electronically faulty.

 

[Gene Wirchenko]

[snip]

Don't get one of those thumb drives which have the retractable USB plug.
They're often intermittently dodgy. I bought a 32GB one recently and it
worked on one computer always, on another most of the time, on another
only now and then.

My experience with USB drives is that they are somewhat flaky in
general. Bad luck, heavy use, whatever. I would not get one that did
not have a cover for the contacts. My current one, I have used quite
a bit. When it is not in use, I keep it capped and inside an old pill
bottle. That way, I do not have to worry about dirt and shorts, but
this is obviously not quite good enough.

Dirt or a short took out another that I had. It swung out from a
penknife. I used to joke that I had the world's meanest USB drive,
and if you were to argue about that, I would stab you with it (as I
swung out a blade).

[snip]

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

 

[Ken Blake]

My experience with USB drives is that they are somewhat flaky in
general. Bad luck, heavy use, whatever. I would not get one that did
not have a cover for the contacts. My current one, I have used quite
a bit. When it is not in use, I keep it capped and inside an old pill
bottle. That way, I do not have to worry about dirt and shorts, but
this is obviously not quite good enough.

I have ten thumb drives, of various sizes from 64MB to 16GB, of
various styles, and from various manufacturers. One of them has no
cover at all. I have never had a single problem with any of them.

I certainly don't claim that what I've experienced with ten is enough
to prove that thumb drives never have any problems, but my experience
is certainly different from yours.

 

[Joe Morris]

Don't get one of those thumb drives which have the retractable USB plug.
They're often intermittently dodgy. I bought a 32GB one recently and it
worked on one computer always, on another most of the time, on another
only now and then.
This is it;
http://www.ryman.co.uk/1405267001/SanDisk-Cruzer-Edge-USB-Flash-Drive-32GB/Product
I've now put it in the bin.

What you may have encountered is a drive with too much plastic housing at
the connector end of the shell; from the picture in the ad you linked above
it looks like the plastic shell on the bottom (as shown) extends a good
distance closer to the end of the connector than does the top.

I've had drives (including a Cruzer) that on certain machines would not seat
in the USB connector because the drive had extra shell plastic exactly where
the computer case had extra shell plastic, and the two together prevented
the drive from seating. After moving the drive to a connector without the
extra plastic everything worked.

Joe

 

[choro]

I have ten thumb drives, of various sizes from 64MB to 16GB, of
various styles, and from various manufacturers. One of them has no
cover at all. I have never had a single problem with any of them.

I certainly don't claim that what I've experienced with ten is enough
to prove that thumb drives never have any problems, but my experience
is certainly different from yours.

It should be obvious to all that the quality of the USB ports on some
(cheaper) branded computers are not quite to the standards of better
products. It is not only the flash drives that we should be looking at
but probably more the USB ports on computers. A decent motherboard with
quality parts will obviously give less trouble, if any. Mine's a better
specified Giga mobo with parts selected for quality and I hardly ever
experience such problems. Quite frankly some USB cables leave a lot to
be desired quality wise. The same thing can be said of USB ports. Flash
sticks are on the whole well made. But there again, stick to well known
quality brands, would be my advice for all it is worth. --
choro
*****

 

[choro]

What you may have encountered is a drive with too much plastic housing at
the connector end of the shell; from the picture in the ad you linked above
it looks like the plastic shell on the bottom (as shown) extends a good
distance closer to the end of the connector than does the top.

I've had drives (including a Cruzer) that on certain machines would not seat
in the USB connector because the drive had extra shell plastic exactly where
the computer case had extra shell plastic, and the two together prevented
the drive from seating. After moving the drive to a connector without the
extra plastic everything worked.

Joe

Futher to what I just posted in reply to the previous posting, what you
are saying proves my point. Poor design and workmanship lead to
problems. My advice is, stick to quality equipment and you won't get
niggling problems.--
choro
*****