Windows 7 Copying Issues

[The Random NPC]

I'm trying to copy my music to a flash drive to listen to in the car, but when I try to transfer the files, not everything copies.
I'm not sure what's going on as it'll copy the folders but won't copy the files within. Anyone know what's going on with that?

[Fri]

Need more details. What happens?

What's the flash drive? From the top of my head, for example, there's chance that the flash drive is fake. I mean, there used to be a plague of fake flash drive that says they have x gb size and use some software trickery to make them show they're that big, but actually it's just a few MB large. Another idea is that maybe somewhere there's copy protection. Either the computer, the files, the flashdrive. Someone might have more ideas.

[factotum]

Might be worth checking the USB drive for errors, or trying a different one to see if you get a different result?

[The Random NPC]

I got the flash drive from Amazon, but it definitely has enough space. This is the second one I've used, from a completely different company. I use right click to drag the files over to the flash drive window and choose copy. It takes nearly 4 hours due to the amount of files. And it does seem to copy more files every time I redo it, but I can't be sure of that. Also all of my copy protected files are in another folder.

[Bohandas]

IIRC some flash drives can't have more than around 2000 files in a given folder or they sr=tart to act wonky

[The Random NPC]

IIRC some flash drives can't have more than around 2000 files in a given folder or they sr=tart to act wonky
Good to know. It's about 7000 files, and they're split up into different files based on album.

EDIT: I've been copying the files in smaller batches an that seems to work better. I just think it's really weird.

[snowblizz]

Depending on the flashdrive's formatting you may be hitting some kind of memory/filesize problem.

A lot of memory uses FATs that aren't as good as more modern ones, e.g. still using FAT32 for wide compatibility, where limits of e.g. 2gb or number of files can hit you.

As to the fake flash memories those are a really annoying problem becasue the only way to find ouit is to fill the drive and try to read it all back. What happens is that broken chips are taken and instead of destroyed sold on the cheap, usually on eBay. A 64Gb one will look good becuase it is a 64gb chip and got all the credentials, it's just that parts of it is broken so you can only access part of it. I've found it's usually 7-8Gb at the "start" that works. You can sometimes use them as a smaller memory provided you have software that reformatted it properly. But for many applications it won't work as devices will look at the factorysettings and start writing to nonexisting adresses.

This problem should be minimal if buying namebrand flash memory but Amazon can be infiltrated by unscrupulous sellers the same as other platforms

[The Random NPC]

Depending on the flashdrive's formatting you may be hitting some kind of memory/filesize problem.

A lot of memory uses FATs that aren't as good as more modern ones, e.g. still using FAT32 for wide compatibility, where limits of e.g. 2gb or number of files can hit you.

As to the fake flash memories those are a really annoying problem becasue the only way to find ouit is to fill the drive and try to read it all back. What happens is that broken chips are taken and instead of destroyed sold on the cheap, usually on eBay. A 64Gb one will look good becuase it is a 64gb chip and got all the credentials, it's just that parts of it is broken so you can only access part of it. I've found it's usually 7-8Gb at the "start" that works. You can sometimes use them as a smaller memory provided you have software that reformatted it properly. But for many applications it won't work as devices will look at the factorysettings and start writing to nonexisting adresses.

This problem should be minimal if buying namebrand flash memory but Amazon can be infiltrated by unscrupulous sellers the same as other platforms

Would reformatting fix that? Cause if not, that would explain everything.

[snowblizz]

Would reformatting fix that? Cause if not, that would explain everything.

Sorry what part. The FAT structure or having a defective fake flashdrive?

Yes you can usually reformat the flashdrive from FAT32 to NTFS or some of the "Linux ones" EXT or some such, I forget the names, though compatibility with devices/computers and such may not be guaranteed. But you'd have to make sur eit does pick a new format, those quickreformats just remove the adress information from memory or some such.

You want something like the free "SD CARD Formatter" program for formatting a SD card.

A broken fake flash will look like it worked when copying files but you can never be sure if all the files or the whole file resides in a place you can acccess. It will usually show up but then not be accessible. Reformatting it will simply move around the part you can access, sort of, so if you try and copy files, reformat, start agian conceivably you could get different files there. Though it probably would just show them all there and whatever is in a bad sector just can't be read.