USB sticks: whose side are they on?

[tamaranth]

I have a number of USB sticks (mostly USB2) which I use on Windows and Linux machines. I also have an MP3 player that's basically a USB stick with firmware.

Sometimes, files loaded on one OS won't show on a different OS. (Mostly they're visible everywhere.)

Example 1: On Tuesday I copied a couple of Access databases (and some MP3s) from my Linux desktop to a USB stick. On Wednesday, when I stuck the stick into a Windows XP laptop, those files weren't there -- though other, pre-existing files were. Now (Thursday) I'm at werk again, and on Linux, and the files are visible once more.

Example 2: That USB MP3 player says it's full on ladymoonray's Windows laptop, even though its capacity is 512MB and there's only 330MB of music on there. The mystery is solved when I play the music: there are quite a few tracks that just don't show up on the Windows PC, and thus can't be deleted (which in some cases is a real pain). I still need to work out which machine I loaded those files from, so that I have a better chance of clearing them off again ...

Can anyone advise? I do need to use some files on both Linux and Windows, so having dedicated USB sticks isn't going to solve the problem.

Comments

[lamentables.livejournal.com]

Completely OT:

I noticed on a relatively recent post that you were listening to Blowzabella... they were recommended to me by a fellow traveller earlier this year. I hated his other recommendation, Show of Hands, (well, I liked the instrumentals, hated the singing) so I'm not confident about his judgement, certainly not confident enough to actually buy some Blowzabella, so I was wondering whether you might be able to provide me with a sample?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

Sure! Drop me an email (tamaranth at gmail) and I'll see what I can do ... though you'll need several tracks to base your decision on, as I find the quality very variable.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

1. Are you explicitly syncing and unmounting the memory stick under Linux, or relying on the automounter to know what it's doing?

2. Are the file permissions correct? I seem to recall FAT filesystems have a "hidden" attribute of some kind.

3. Is the file system corrupt?

[tamaranth.livejournal.com]

1. Explicitly unmounting but not explicitly syncing. Qu'est-ce que c'est?
2. They seem fine -- and are the same as files I *can* see on both OSs.
3. Not obviously: but could it be corrupt and only affect a couple of files, on one particular machine or OS?

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

my thoughts are permissions - check the advanced ones like admin view under xp - or long files names with characters illegal under one OS. fiddly but possible solution - install Services for Unix on XP - free download from MS - and mount the drive in a shell window and check that.

borked file system can be so borked that you get different views of the file table on different systems. empty, reformat and refill to check that... FAT16 or FAT32?