USB flash drive behaves erratically

brd1066 · 17 Oct 2023

Hello,

I have a USB flash drive with 16 Gb capacity. I hook it to a desktop computer and to a laptop. Some times I have to run "scan and repair" to be able to access the folders. Sometime, it gets disconnected after some time of being idle. Some time the system cannot fix it and the files on it are not accessible. But then, some times everything works fine. I am not sure if 16 Gb poses the problem, such as lack of power from the USB port, or the connection on the drive itself is damaged.

After several attempts, and after completing "scan and repair", my flash drive is currently working fine and very fast. All files are accessible. But next time I will again likely get the same message that there are errors on the drive and I will have to run "scan and repair" again.

Did anyone encounter this kind of issue with USB flash drives (memory sticks) with large capacity?

Thanks,
Branislav

Berton · 17 Oct 2023

It's not necessarily the "large capacity", I have some at 64GB, 128GB and one at 256GB without issue, but how they are stored, carried in pockets, etc., can have an effect. I do carry a couple when going out on a call but usually such an issue occurs when plugging into a 'foreign' computer. Sometimes it's whether they are brand name models or generic/unknown names. I once had to work with a 2TB no name drive that would only partition and format at 1TB, it worked okay but not as advertised.

brd1066 · 17 Oct 2023

Thanks. I mistyped - my SSD memory stick has the unbelievable 16 Tb of space. I bought it in Europe this summer for only $40, and was suspicious from the beginning that something was wrong with it. But today it is working fine on both my office and my home desktops, after I ran --Scan and Repair" app. Go figure....

Hard to pinpoint the issue because it is not easily reproducible.

Try3 · 18 Oct 2023

It is not 16TB.
No ifs, no buts, no maybes.
Partial recovery of a fake-capacity USB stick - my post #8 - TenForums

Best of luck,
Denis

Helmut · 18 Oct 2023

It is a fake drive, you were ripped off.

The issue is that semiconductor chips and assembly of memory sticks requires extensive quality controls.

Without that the drive is just a piece of junk.

brd1066 · 18 Oct 2023

Try3 said:

It is not 16TB.
No ifs, no buts, no maybes.
Partial recovery of a fake-capacity USB stick - my post #8 - TenForums

Best of luck,
Denis

THANK YOU! This is useful! I will check the real capacity of my drive.

brd1066 · 23 Oct 2023

Try3 said:

It is not 16TB.
No ifs, no buts, no maybes.
Partial recovery of a fake-capacity USB stick - my post #8 - TenForums

Best of luck,
Denis

Definitely not 16 Tb. But I cannot figure out what its real size is. Media Tester fails: First failing byte: 61,891,956,736. When I create 32 Gb partition Media Test does not fail on repeated testing. But, H2TESTW does not fail at all - I aborted testing after about 156 Gb tested without failure. I don't understand that. Maybe H2TESTW needs to complete the test to show existing issues?? I guess, this drive maybe has up to 60 Gb actual space, or it is indeed just 32 Gb.

Megahertz · 23 Oct 2023

brd1066 said:

Definitely not 16 Tb. But I cannot figure out what its real size is. Media Tester fails: First failing byte: 61,891,956,736. When I create 32 Gb partition Media Test does not fail on repeated testing. But, H2TESTW does not fail at all - I aborted testing after about 156 Gb tested without failure. I don't understand that. Maybe H2TESTW needs to complete the test to show existing issues?? I guess, this drive maybe has up to 60 Gb actual space, or it is indeed just 32 Gb.

Yes, H2TESTW needs to complete the test to show existing issues.
It writes reference files and then read them. When it reads is when it finds the error.
Begin the test selecting only 16G.

MisterEd · 23 Oct 2023

All flash drives have a chip on them that the manufacture uses to write information such as size. Windows reads this information to get its size. Some sellers have equipment that will rewrite this information so that the drives report a much bigger size that it actually is. An example is a 8TB drive that is actually 64GB internally. The drive works OK as long as less data is written than the actual size. After that the data starts getting trashed. The problem is that many buyers don't realize what the real problem is and simply think the drive has failed. Most probably never realize that what they bought was a fake.

New utility to check for "fake" flash drives - I like this one
New utility to check for "fake" flash drives - I like this one | Windows 11 Forum

brd1066 · 24 Oct 2023

Megahertz said:

Yes, H2TESTW needs to complete the test to show existing issues.
It writes reference files and then read them. When it reads is when it finds the error.
Begin the test selecting only 16G.

OK 16 Gb test completed with no errors. I then formatted the drive and selected 32 Gb to test, and again test completed with no errors. After formatting the drive I then selected 64 Gb to test, and that one failed with the output below. Does this mean that I can format this drive and create a partition of, say, 57 Gb, and the drive will be reliable?? Or it is better to junk this flash drive?

Warning: Only 65536 of 15999981 MByte tested.
The media is likely to be defective.
57.2 GByte OK (119965896 sectors)
6.7 GByte DATA LOST (14251832 sectors)
Details:0 KByte overwritten (0 sectors)
0 KByte slightly changed (< 8 bit/sector, 0 sectors)
6.7 GByte corrupted (14251832 sectors)
0 KByte aliased memory (0 sectors)
First error at offset: 0x0000000e4c219000
Expected: 0x0000000e4c219000
Found: 0x0000000000000000
H2testw version 1.3
Writing speed: 13.0 MByte/s
Reading speed: 17.5 MByte/s
H2testw v1.4