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  1. Member spiritgumm's Avatar
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    I have a few Adata 16gb flash drives which I've used with dvd players and blu-ray players (via USB port) for a few years. I usually turn off the player before removing the flash drive; sometimes I leave the drive in the player. I was mainly using one to watch some videos, and it started playing buggy. The drive then became unrecognized by the player. Put in my PC, file names looked like chinese. Soon it became undetectable there.
    I used Adata's online program to reset the USB, worked fine for a few days, then failed to be detected by blu-ray player and PC again. I fixed it again, but figured it would keep being buggy so I returned it for an exchange. Meanwhile I loaded an mkv on another flash drive (same model), watched part of it, turned off the bluray player. I left it attached as I've done many times before with the other one. Next day, that drive became undetectable by player and PC, AND even the Adata software wont work so it's essentially dead.
    Is it possible the bluray player is messing up the flash drives?
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  2. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    "Adata"? Seriously, I'm going to make a guess that it is your Flash drives that are corrupting your flash drives. Bad media just "keeps on giving". You get what you pay for.
    Sandisk, PNY, Corsair, Transcend, maybe Kingston, Verbatim, Lexar. Those you should be able to trust to stay good for a while.

    re: your corrupt drive,
    Have you done a chkdsk/scandisk pass on it? Or Spinrite? Dead is not NECESSARILY dead, nor unrecoverable (partially or even fully sometimes).

    It SHOULDN'T happen that your BD player is affecting the drive, but electrical disturbance can screw up a drive whether it's meant as read-only or read-write, etc. Maybe when you power down (or power up) it is doing this. What does your manual say? Mine recommends you take the drive out before powering down. Even if your manual doesn't say that, it probably is a good idea.

    Scott
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  3. Member spiritgumm's Avatar
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    I've considered fluctuating power supply, but I consider that part of being connected to the BD player - possibly it developed this problem itself. It's an LG player.
    I did move a few months ago, and have noticed the apartment lights dimming frequently; the power shut off completely once for no obvious reason.
    Using the same power strip/surge protector. The LG manual doesnt mention how to plugin/remove flash drives, so I treated it like a PC by powering off. Anyway, it's never been a problem until now.

    Since the 2nd flash is undetected, not sure how to check it. The first one will hopefully be replaced with a new one, so I cannot check if it for bad sectors. The commonality here (besides brand) is using the flash in the BD player.

    I havent read that Adata was known to be subpar. When I researched brands, some of the ones you named including Adata had a similar percent of failure and dissatisfied customers.
    Last edited by spiritgumm; 7th May 2014 at 20:57.
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Subpar? Maybe not. Recommended? Probably not.

    But since you mentioned it, fluctuating power is well-known to be a source of ruined electronics. That is probably the culprit.

    UPS!

    Scott
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  5. Member turk690's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by spiritgumm View Post
    Is it possible the bluray player is messing up the flash drives?
    Could be. But flash drives eventually die, inserted into blu-ray players or otherwise, fluctuating power nonetheless and notwithstanding. Some very intricate things happen when data is written to flash drives. Ultimately, it basically consists of millions of capacitor/cells being charged. Sooner or later they can't be reliably be charged or maintain a charge (and therefore hold data). The ideal situation with flash memory is to write once, then read many times. Writing/erasing stresses the cells a lot; indeed from day one when you start to write and delete data on it you inexorably lead it to its death. This is why, for example, manual defragmentation of the type that we are wont to do with conventional hard drives to improve their performance is disastrous for SSDs; windoze (7 and up) automatically turns it off for detected SSDs. The built-in controller in a USB flash drive and SSDs automatically distribute data to be written to individual cells in such a way that all of them are given equal probabilities of getting written and read to, and by implication spread data integrity (by analogy, we defragment because want to concentrate/compact data on a conventional hard drive for faster read speeds; on flash memory, its controller does the exact opposite: spread data across random cells). SSDs are given high marks (or not) by reviewers by the type and quality of this on-board controller; its not clear to me how much the same is true in the case of USB flash drives. The world currently twists and turns by the gazillion bits of data held within the cells of very fragile flash memory deep in some server farm somewhere. Fortunately, flash memory is relatively cheap, so the best option is just to deploy lots of them for redundancy.
    One other thing with USB flash drives is not unique to them but is common with all USB connections that are constantly plugged and unplugged. The USB connector was designed such that metal contacts in USB socket rest on the metal traces on the USB device inserted. A certain amount of springiness and pressure ensure contacts and traces fit snugly together. Eventually, plugging and unplugging the USB device many times causes the socket contacts to lose springiness and the little pressure left makes for gradually unreliable electrical connection. There are four contacts in a USB plug: two for power, two for data; unreliable connection with any one of them will cause the device to not be detected by host, or be detected intermittently. Dirty, dusty, humid environments (although I suppose less likely) can also do the same. What I do here is to spray the USB connection with isopropyl alcohol, and with a flat micro screwdriver I tease the host contacts up to force them to mate better with the USB device plugged in (may be hard to demo this to non-pro, though).
    Lastly, there are standards for USB power: USB2 sources should be able to provide up to 500mA of current to power the inserted USB drive; USB3 is 900mA. It's not clear exactly how this is implemented by such myriad sources like TVs and blu-ray players; it's also possible their power supply for that USB port, failed, and with that, the detection for your Adata flash drive...
    For the nth time, with the possible exception of certain Intel processors, I don't have/ever owned anything whose name starts with "i".
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  6. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    I have USB flash drives dating back as much as 8-9 years, and only 2 have gone bad: both Sandisk, but both because they got VERY BENT while attached (which basically ruined the connections/soldering). I still use another USB of mine regularly (reading + writing) that is a generic? (cannot tell anymore as all the labelling has worn off) 8GB I got when those first became available (needed the extra size at the time) in ~'07-'08 and it is going strong. It's transferring as I write this.

    If they are good quality to begin with, treated gingerly & properly, and stored well (with covers, etc), they can last a pretty LONG time for so-called "portable, short-term" storage. I do believe it is that unreliable electrical connection (whether physical or voltage-wise) that does these and other devices in the most.

    Scott
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    Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    "Adata"? Seriously, I'm going to make a guess that it is your Flash drives that are corrupting your flash drives. Bad media just "keeps on giving". You get what you pay for.
    Sandisk, PNY, Corsair, Transcend, maybe Kingston, Verbatim, Lexar. Those you should be able to trust to stay good for a while.
    Not only would I add Patriot to this list, in my opinion they are the best. I've never had a flash drive fail on me and some of mine go back 5+ years. I've even got a 128 GB one and it still works fine and I've had it for maybe 3 years now, possibly 4.
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  8. Have you tried right clicking on the drive in question and using Windows to reformat it? I'm assuming the same option is available for newer versions of Windows, but for XP using Windows Explorer:

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    You might want to select Properties first to see which file system the drive currently uses. If it's Fat32 you can just reformat it. If it's NTFS and you want to keep it the same, there's a bit of a process in order to format a flash drive as NTFS when running XP. Newer versions of Windows may let you choose either file system without having to go through the following "hassle".
    How do I format a USB Flash Drive to NTFS file system?
    If you format the drive as NTFS using the method in the above link, you can change it back to the "optimise for fast removal" setting when you done if you prefer.

    If you format as fat32 the file size limitation will be around 4GB. If you format as NTFS there's no limitation, but the player may not be able to read it if it's a bit old (all the players in this house read NTFS drives).

    I generally reformat while checking the "quick format" option. If you don't (I assume it applies to flash drives the same as it does to hard drives) Windows will scan the drive and check it for errors while formatting. In your case that might be a good idea, but expect the process to take a fair while.

    If you can't see the drive in My Computer/Windows Explorer, try using Computer Management to see if the drive is listed (see the above link). Drives won't appear in Explorer unless they're formatted. If it appears in Computer Management you can try formatting it from there.
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  9. Member spiritgumm's Avatar
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    Originally Posted by turk690 View Post
    Originally Posted by spiritgumm View Post
    Is it possible the bluray player is messing up the flash drives?
    Could be. But flash drives eventually die, inserted into blu-ray players or otherwise, fluctuating power nonetheless and notwithstanding...
    There are four contacts in a USB plug: two for power, two for data; unreliable connection with any one of them will cause the device to not be detected by host, or be detected intermittently.
    I also wonder if a power fluctuation is strong enough to harm the flash thru the BD player, wouldnt it also effect the BD player itself?

    I have two other older flashes (Kingston, Transcend) but they dont have raised connectors inside. I have four Adata S102 Pro USB 3.0, and they do have the raised spring connections. I plucked them with a toothpick in the newly dead one, they seem fine. Again, I dont use these with much frequency (I suppose there's an argument that that is also a potential problem). I prefer Adata for the speed at 2.0 (I dont have 3.0 in my PC).

    My flashes are fat32. When I wrote the dead Adata is undetected, I meant even in Computer Management.
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    I have a similar problem, except that my flash drive (an 8 gig Transcend) still works perfectly fine in my PC, but is no longer recognized when I plug it into my bluray player. By not recognize I mean it's like it's not even plugged in.

    I have two other flash drives (a 16 gig Cruzer and a 32 gig PNY) that both still work fine in the bluray player. I've tried reformatting the 8 gig as exFAT and then back to NFTS (my Samsung bluray recognizes NFTS) with no luck. I also did a full format, as opposed to a quick format.

    Like I said, in every other respect it still works as it should, it just doesn't show up as an option when I plug it into my bluray player. This just started a few days ago.

    Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
    Last edited by mystic7; 16th May 2014 at 07:00.
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  11. @ mystic7: welcome to the forum.

    Maybe it's not making good contact? If it's kinda loosey-goosey when plugged into the BD player, give it a little pinch. Other than that, I dunno.

    Funny that Adata was mentioned. I've had a couple go bad. I have several others, mostly PNY, and never had any other thumb drive fail on me. Not statistically significant, but there you are.
    Pull! Bang! Darn!
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  12. Member
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    It fits pretty snug, but I'll give it a shot. It's useless to me right now so if I break it no biggie. Thanks.
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