Issue: USB drives (also called “flash” or “jump” drives) purchased from the Reject Shop.
Now and then the RS sells 32 GB usb drives in a pack of 3 for $20.
Last week I used one USB to store a couple of eBooks, which I started to read over a couple of days.
Before too long the folder in which they were stored was emptied.
The folder name still shows when I plug the USB into my mac, but is empty.
All other folders are as they were before I saved the eBooks to that drive. That is, the data therein is in the same condition it was before I saved the eBooks.
Before saving the eBooks and other files to the USB I scanned for viruses (and there were none).
None on the USB and non in the eBooks.
Nothing available (at no cost) on my mac to fix the usb or reveal hidden files has worked.
I even tried retrieving and revealing the files via Windows, on a pc, but no such luck.
I have not downloaded any third party software that allegedly can find such files.
Does anyone know of any such software that works? In my case on a mac?
Today using another of the RS USBs, after all there were 3 in the pack, I saved countless files to a USB. While saving to the USB, all went well. I saw the file size slowly creep up. Or so it seemed.
After a while I decided to open the relevant folder and sort some articles into directories.
I could see the folder contained 41 MB of data, but before I could click on the folder, the 41 MB changed to “zero megabytes” and the folder is now empty.
I have no idea where the contents went to, but certainly not to the BIN as I have looked there.
In short: 2 out of 2 USBs from the RS failed miserably. I doubt I’ll return them to the RS for fear of someone successfully manipulating it and managing to access personal information.
Interestingly, the USBs were no cheaper than better name brands sold at Big W. So IMHO it’s not a question of the USB’s price, but quality.
You may want to use a free utility to check whether the drives are lying to you about their size (and potentially therefore ‘writing’ data to space that doesn’t exist).
I have in the past used a different utility called H2testw, but it overwrites any data on the drive. And the website is now giving me a German-language GDPR popup (when running the program you can select English language).
I tried using 3 laptops (2 x mac and 1 x pc). All show the folder with the eBooks as listed but with zero MB. Before posting here I went through the basic check on a mac ie Disk Utility —> First Aid and it showed (a) nothing wrong with the USB that needs fixing and (b) nothing in the particular folder. I know that I can ramp up my investigation via Terminal, but as I know diddly squat about Terminal, I am sure I will do more harm than good by going that route.
I think that these devices, iDigital I believe, are old technology.
When I see things like compatible with USB 2.0, and Windows XP, Vista, 7, and Mac OS X, that is old.
They just may not work reliably with today’s USB 3.x and current operating systems. But formatting them before use could get rid of bugs built into the devices on manufacture.
I would stick with good name brands like SanDisk and Verbatim. They are available almost everywhere, and really for a similar price to that from TRS. And only buy USB 3.x spec devices.
You may be right. I also had problems with Emtec 64GB USB which after 2 weeks of occasional use is not recognised by my mac or a PC. The added problem is that I would have to be mad to return it for a refund lest someone more savvy than I manages to access the data, some of which is personal.
What can you say about the brand Lexar? Is that any good?
Did you format this one, or have tried to reformat it after the problem?
It sounds like the issue many not be the quality of the USB drives, but something at the Mac end causing issues. It could be an incompatible preformat by the USB drive manufacturer or a problem writing to the drive. Is the firmware/OS fully updated to current patch version.
Writing to flash memory is a two stage process. First to a buffer on the device, and then erase and write into pages on the actual flash memory. This may not happen synchronously when doing bulk writes like file copies.
Are you always, always, using the eject function before removing the USB drive? Because there is a very high chance of corrupting these devices if you don’t. Particularly if the controllers on the devices are using older write protocols and don’t understand more recent bulk write features.
You may be right. I also had problems with Emtec 64GB USB which after 2 weeks of occasional use is not recognised by my mac or a PC. The added problem is that I would have to be mad to return it for a refund lest someone more savvy than I manages to access the data, some of which is personal.
What can you say about the brand Lexar? Is that any good?
Frankly the USBs from the Reject Shop are no cheaper than brand names, when on sale, from Big W. Given their woeful performance, they should sell 3 for $5 and not 3 for $20.
I did not format it before or after use.
I will do so.
Reading your post, I wonder if the problem is the USB hub I use to connect USB-A drives to my USB-C port on the MacBook.
Possibly. But USB-A and USB-C refer to the physical connections, not the protocols.
I put my IO devices like keyboard, mouse, printer through a USB hub and use a dedicated USB port for the flash drive.
The only devices that ever use that port are flash drives. But I personally stay away from really big capacity devices. I would never trust them for backups, so for me it is a means of transferring some data from one computer to another, or some portable applications that I can run off some computer other than my usual one.
Rarely have I needed any more than 16GB, and that can fit an entire Linux distribution. Or a Windows repair and install disk.
