Help with USB clip!

13 Spider Bloody Chain

Grandmaster Knight

• Oct 28, 2007

• #1

Ugh! My 1 Gig usb clip refuses to acknowledge that I've deleted a file in it.

I stuffed a pretty big file in there (about 600 megs), and after I transferred it to my other computer, I deleted that file. But the USB clip doesn't think that it's been deleted, so there's 600 megs of wasted space in that thing.

Any help?

 

Archonsod

An old salt from the mainland

Marquis

Honour Guard Old Guard

• Oct 28, 2007

• #2

Format it.

 

13 Spider Bloody Chain

Grandmaster Knight

• Oct 28, 2007

• #3

...huh, well that was easy. Thanks, Arch.

...any idea why it did that, though? Why it wouldn't restore the used data space once files were deleted?

 

Archonsod

An old salt from the mainland

Marquis

Honour Guard Old Guard

• Oct 28, 2007

• #4

Probably either Windows Removable Media database SNAFU, or else the FAT on the USB wasn't cleared properly. Can happen sometimes. Depending on the USB stick itself, could also be caused by the file being corrupted rather than deleted.

Doesn't matter though, formatting will nuke the lot of em!

 

Janus

*spicy* *camper*

Administrator

Old Guard

• Oct 28, 2007

• #5

Windows will also sometimes use a recycle bin for removable drives rather than directly deleting files (depending on the drive capacity and file size), so emptying the recycle bin is needed to free the space back up.

 

Cymro

Grandmaster Knight

• Oct 28, 2007

• #6

Archonsod said:

or else the FAT on the USB wasn't cleared properly.

Click to expand...

Despite the fact that I know that FAT is the file system, it still gives me an image of a USB pen with lard being pumped out of it

On a more serious note, some of the older flashpens didn't work if you formatted them - something to do with drivers, if I remember correctly. That, or it was windows ME being its old self.

 

Rabid Potatoe

Master Knight

• Oct 28, 2007

• #7

They really should give these acronyms more thought  .

My USB is FAT!
My hard drive has a FAT!
This is FAT!

heh.

 

Archonsod

An old salt from the mainland

Marquis

Honour Guard Old Guard

• Oct 28, 2007

• #8

Cymro said:

On a more serious note, some of the older flashpens didn't work if you formatted them - something to do with drivers, if I remember correctly. That, or it was windows ME being its old self.

Click to expand...

Most older models had the electronics emulated as part of the filesystem, but they usually shipped with specific formatting software.