AKICOLJ - USB memory sticks

[gurthaew]

My 4Gb memory stick seems to be suffering from corrupted files. There's nothing important on there, so I tried to format it; that seemed to be succesful. When I tried copying more stuff too it, I got an error message saying there were corrupted files again.

Does anyone know of a downloadable disk checking utility I could give it a quick once-over with? I will replace it PDQ as it's the one I use to move work related stuff around, but I'm curious to know what it wrong with it.

Comments

[crazyscot.livejournal.com]

How old is it, how much use has it seen? NAND flash - almost certainly what's in the stick - gradually wears out over time. If the driver is sane, bad regions are identified and put out of use. However if it's an unbranded stick then it may not do this or, worse, may conceivably have a crap flash translation layer, which would mean you're out of luck.

I'd go for a bad blocks scan if I were you, that should tickle all the sectors, identify bad ones and put them beyond use. You don't need to download anything to do that: http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2005/08/fix-format-usb-flash-drives/ .