usb drive corrupt

[nmeyers at javalinux.net]

On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 05:02:35PM -0400, David Hummel wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 04, 2005 at 04:48:16PM -0400, Jerry Feldman wrote:
> > 
> > On Thursday 04 August 2005 4:30 pm, John.Boland at reebok.com wrote:
> > >
> > > I've got a 1 gig Lexar USB thumb drive that has been working well
> > > for about a year.  I've been using it for backups and to transfer
> > > files from Linux to M$.  The drive appears as a DOS partition.
> > > Recently, when I insert the drive into a Windows box (2000, 2003,
> > > XP), M$ says that the drive is corrupt!  However, I can still mount
> > > it using a couple of Linux boxes and a MAC.  There is no corruption
> > > that fsck can detect.  I have tried several Windows machines, all
> > > with the same result.
> >
> > Just to add to John Boland's suggestion, which I agree with.  First,
> > copy the entire contents of the drive to a local HD.  You can use tar
> > (or zip) to make an archive.  Once you know everything is copied and
> > your data is secure, then you can reformat the drive. I would probably
> > use Windows to do this.
> 
> Linux mkdosfs will do nicely.
> 
> > Remember, that under Windows, you need to tell the OS to unload the
> > drive.  On Linux these days all you need to do is to remove the drive,
> > but a umount never hurts. 
> 
> No, please use umount first.  Not doing so could potentially get you
> right back into the same situation.  umount ensures that there are no
> open files on the device, and that any filesystem buffers are flushed.

It would be awfully surprising if the dosfs driver never buffered data.

Nathan