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TICKET ARCHIVE -> a Mac Killed My Usb Drive

jono1 - Jul 18, 2005 - 1:29 am

For the last 6 months or so I have been using a 1GB Apacer Handy Steno H202 Flash drive (http://www.apacer.com/apacer_english...teno_ht202.asp) regularly on both Windows and Apple computers.
Yesterday it was plugged in to my home PC and worked flawlessly all day. Today, the first computer I plugged it into was an eMac at school running OS X 10.3.6. I have used this flash drive on several identical computers, including this particular one on numerous previous occasions. And it seemed to work fine.
I plugged it in, had a look on it and realised that the file I wanted to open needed a program only installed on the Windows computers so I ejected the USB drive and moved on. But when I plugged it in and tried to open it, Windows, in it's usual blunt manner informed me that the drive wasn't formatted.
At first I thought that this was the computer's problem, after all I've had a couple of problems with these particular computers and this USB drive before, usually solved by plugging it into the rear ports or trying a different computer. I tried both. In fact I've tried it on over a dozen different Windows and Apple computers and none of them will open it (OSX pops up with a dialogue box saying "You have inserted a disc containing no volumes that Mac OS X can rea. To continue with the disk inserted, click Ignore." and has three buttons - Initialize, Ignore and Eject).

Any thoughts on what might have happened and how I can fix it before I lose months of work by reformatting the drive?

baldprof - Jul 18, 2005 - 8:32 am

When you have access to a Windows PC, you might try running Scandisk on it, or chkdsk /f from a command line.

I have had more than one flash drive crap out on me; I really don't know what happens with those things. Anyway I always used to make regular backups to a CD or to a folder on the desktop, then reformated and restored the files periodically. I think a lot of what happens is inherent with usb devices. Your mileage may vary according to how many other usb devices are connected, are you using a powered hub, etc..

I bought a Shuffl to use as a flash drive and it has proven to be the most reliable.

BUt try that 'check disk'; it's worked before for me.

jono1 - Jul 18, 2005 - 9:52 am

Thanks for the suggestions, already tried both of those with no joy. Apparently like Thomas J said the partition table is broke so neither scandisk nor checkdisk actually recognise that there's a file system on the disk.

The most frustrating thing is though, I found two separate utilities that allow me to see whats on the disk but they're both about $70-$80 (which I don't have) and i have demos of the programs that allow me to *see* the files just not *get* at them...

So I guess at the moment my options are rather limited...buy the programs and bill my school since it was a school computer that did this...or just give up.

baldprof - Jul 18, 2005 - 1:29 pm

If that work is important to you, buy the utility. Perhaps a friend(s) of yours would be willing to go in for half, because that person might need to recover some data. Or you could ask at the computer lab. They might have something available.

This is really strange though, because while I have had flash drives become unreadable on one platform, I could always read it on the other. So I have had this problem with both Windows PCs and Macs. For what ever reason, the drive will appear to be "unmounted" even though the OS hasn't saved/closed all the files. So I have just learned to be patient and wait a few seconds before pulling it.

I checked at versiontracker.com, and found that the only decent Mac programs were about $80. This data corruption must be a common problem, otherwise those programs wouldn't command such a high price.

I don't have anymore to offer, but I'll put this back out in the open pool just in case someone else does.

jono1 - Jul 19, 2005 - 2:05 am

Thanks for the help