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What does a flash drive act like when it goes bad? My mother has a Dell 128mb keychain drive that she uses for school stuff. Mostly word and exell files, stuff like that. Tonight she tried to save a file from a laptop and she got an error saying she didn't have the correct permissions to save the file (WTF?) The laptop is a loaner from her school and is set up with one user and that should be irelevent anyway when trying to write to a removable drive. right? So I put her flash drive in the desktop and now I cannot copy/paste a file onto it. A short time later she is able to save a file onto it, but when she tries to rename it she gets the check to see if your drive is full ect. nonsence (I checked and it's only 1/4 full) Oh yeah, there is no trouble reading the info, it just seems to be when writing.

I'd reformat the drive - might just be corrupt. But yes, you'll get all kinds of errors accessing it when it's dying.

If you want to be sure it's okay, do a full scandisk on it (with sector tests).

Sometimes grunge gets on the contacts. A quick shot of contact cleaner (available from Radio Shack) will help (avoid WD40 - it leaves a residue).

thanks. I'll check it out. I'm kinda limited as to my options here, they're out in the middle of nowhere here. I suspect the drive is going, but it's less than a year old with light usage. oh well. I'll give it a scan, didn't think of that... imagine, treating a flash "drive" as is if were a "drive". I guess that wisdom is what separates the pro's from us neophytes

Interesting twist guys. Ran scandisk on it and for giggles, tried to do a defrag. Windows sees the drive as a read only volume! Somebody here has to know how to change that, I thought the read-only flag was file specific...

There should be a switch on the drive that locks/unlocks it for writing.. I think?

eGo

What he said. Some drives have a write protect switch.

um, there is no switch on this one... can you set it through windows somehow? (I'm thinking how it used to be under dos?)

Any model numbers on that thumb drive? Does it look like this?

yepp-er, thats the little bugger right there. I am guessing that you know, or have prior experience with this particular little bit of joy?

Some of them use a software application to lock them.

Originally posted by theophilusmousse
yepp-er, thats the little bugger right there. I am guessing that you know, or have prior experience with this particular little bit of joy?

Yeah, I had a friend who had one, the little piece of crap that it is. Suggestion to you is tell your mother to get a new thumb drive, that little thing only causes problems in my past experiences.

Thanks, I was pretty much going there already.
I guess she got it from the school store for real cheap. Anyone have suggestions on who makes flash drives with a GOOD reputation, ie. Sony, Lexmark, Belkin... I've had no problems with my lexmark so far, but I'm open to opinions/advice from all.

Personally, I'd sugest either Lexar or Sandisk. I've had about 10 drives from either pass through my hands at one point or another, and never had a single problem with them. But in all honesty, to limit it, try Sandisk. Either you could get another thumb drive, or if your mother has a device like a camera or something that uses a flash card, you could get a drive that doubles as a flash reader? Just my $0.02

She uses it to transport files back and forth from school, so she does need a flash drive, not just a reader. But thanks for the imput, I'll have her get one of those two.

Lexmark/Lexar... oops, my bad. Yeah, the body of the one I have makes it impossible to use on some machines, I'll have her get a Sandisk.

Lexar is my recommendation too. If she wants to put it on a keychain the only flash drive I've ever found that can be put on a keychain without snapping off is the JumpDrive sport. You will NEVER lose it if it's on the keychain.

Very fast, reliable and rugged. I nearly bent on in half and it still works. If the rubber cap breaks Lexar sells replacements on their website store.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820191127

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820191129