usb drive corrupt

[dhml at comcast.net (David Hummel)]

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.

-David