Solved: Flash drive give error that its full, but its not.

[Insanity42]

I have read through this thread
http://forums.techguy.org/hardware/508072-says-flash-drive-full-but.html
but it has expired and can't reply to it.

A friend has a similar problem, he has a 8Gb flash drive, that by its properties says it has ~7.11Gb available. When attempting to copy a 4.5Gb file, it states it is full and will not copy it.

I did attempt to look for hidden files, none found. I copy off everything that was on the flash drive, then formatted it, recopied his files back on and same issue.

When I plugged his flash drive into my laptop, my NOD32 detected Conficker worm, and removed the infected files, but this tells me his computer is infected, which I will soon fix for him.

Details
G:\Autorun.inf INF/Conficker.worm
G:\RECYCLER\S-5-3-42-****\jwgkvsq.vmx Win32/Conficker.AA.worm

I wonder if the recycler infection is responsible, but I am not very knowledgeable in what specific viruses may do. Or perhaps it is computer's recycler that is the source.

Even if the worm is responsible, it was cleaned, before I copied his files, and the drive was reformatted. As far as I know, it should cleaned, until he takes it back to his computer.

I regularly scan my laptop with both NOD32 and SpySweeper, and currently am not infected with anything they can detect.

My next step is to do a scan of his hard drive, remove what might be there, then see what may happen.

Any other thoughts?

 

[Ent]

Could the flash have had bad sectors? try running checkdisk, and delete the fragments folder if it finds something.

 

[Insanity42]

chkdsk (no options) reports

The type of the file system is FAT32.
Volume LEGACY created 4/5/2010 2:10 AM
Volume Serial Number is ACD9-712D
Windows is verifying files and folders...
File and folder verification is complete.
Windows has checked the file system and found no problems.
    7,816,332 KB total disk space.
           72 KB in 18 folders.
      121,992 KB in 48 files.
    7,694,264 KB are available.

        4,096 bytes in each allocation unit.
    1,954,083 total allocation units on disk.
    1,923,566 allocation units available on disk.

 

[catlady13]

Pardon me if I am incorrect on this but are not most flash drives formatted in fat32? And if so is there not a 4 gig limit ?
Could this be part of the problem?

 

[Insanity42]

I was just now able to copy a folder holding 860Mb of files, another folder with ~30Mb, and a file ~5.8Mb. total ~896Mb without any issues.

The WMPInfo.xml file on the flash drive has the following

- <DeviceInfo>
  <WMP DeviceID="{032C42B9-E137-4954-BD5A-49A0D446F9BA}" RelationshipID="{2E299F49-60C3-4046-BFAC-BCAD63ACEC0B}" /> 
  </DeviceInfo>

 

[catlady13]

That would make sense with my theory. The other file you are trying to transfer is over 4 gigs.

 

[Insanity42]

and that is because its formatted as FAT32? How does one then use the full capacity of the flash drive?

 

[catlady13]

You should be able to use the full capacity of the flash drive as long as you don't try to put in a file larger than 4 gigs. You can either break the file up, zip it to compress it or rar it to compress it. I am not sure if you can format a flash drive in NTFS. That would solve the large file problem. I am going to take a look at the net and see if that is possible.

 

[Insanity42]

Was responding with this as you responded...


did some reading, and while volumes has a limit of ~137Gb, files are limited to ~4Gb as you said. So the FT32 formatted flash drive might be able to hold 8Gb of data, but has challenges with files that are over 4Gb in size themselves.

Whenever I've gone to format the drive, the only option apparently available is FAT32, yet I've learned that NTFS should overcome this. How can I format it as NTFS?

 

[catlady13]

http://www.ntfs.com/quest22.htm
This article says it can be done and how to do it. I've never tried it so I can't say for sure from personal experience. Of course you know if you format you lose everything on the drive.

 

[Insanity42]

yes, thats why before I copied the files off to a HDD, formatted it, then copied the files back on.

Thanks, I will see if that allows files over 4Gb then.

 

[catlady13]

Please let me know if it works. That is why I always format my hard drives as NTFS. I do video stuff and need to be able to have files larger than 4 gigs.

 

[Insanity42]

My HDD is as well, but I was not aware of the limits for FAT32.

 

[Insanity42]

Seemed to resolve it, thanks.