Macbook usb causing file corruption?

[Shakabab]

Hi all,

 

I've been using external usb drives on my macbook for a while now, both hard drives and flash sticks. I recently noticed that some photo's I copied on a flash drive got corrupted. After doing some research I found that a lot of the files I store on my hard drive are somewhat corrupted. I verified by downloading some files and checking MD5 hash and also copying files and checking integrity with par2 hashes.

 

The hard drive is directly plugged into the macbook so power can't be an issue. I pretty much eliminated faulty formats by testing with multiple devices. That leaves me with either a hardware defect or faulty USB drivers. Any ideas or similar experiences?

 

It might be worth noting that corruption doesn't seem to happen continuously; maybe in 1 out of 4 downloaded/moved files.

 

Ps: I do have macfuse installed, though I ought it unlikely to effect things considering corruption also happens on HFS+ formatted drives.

[Cottage_Cheeses]

Can you still obtain the information inside your external hard drive, and flash drive? If so, it's best to create a backup copy of it. You can try formatting your external drive/flash, but it's strange for both to brake down. I'm pretty sure you forget to do the "non-physical" ejection of your external drive/flash, after removing/placing information into your flash/drive. Thus causing your whole drive/flash to be corrupt. lol so right now I'm guessing you can't even open your files, even though you can see the folder. Try searching for a program/application that may be able to recover your files, but I doubt most of them works, and chances are you will have to pay for them. If you have a backup of your files, just format your external drive and flash, then start using that "non-physical" ejection of your external hard drive and flash after wanting to physically remove them.

 

Try using another computer if possible, if it doesn't do the same thing, then it's your other computer. But if it does do the same thing then try using another cable, for your external hard drive, and if that works then all that's left is your flash... i'm not to sure what's wrong with it.

 

"It might be worth noting that corruption doesn't seem to happen continuously; maybe in 1 out of 4 downloaded/moved files." I think the word you're looking for is continually lol for "...it seems to happen [continually]..."

[Shakabab]

Hi Cottage_Cheeses,

 

Thanks for taking the time and effort to respond to my question. I dug in to it some more, and found that removing the ntfs-3g driver from MacFUSE things got a little better. I now have MacFuse installed but no NTFS write support with it. I think the ntfs extension I used may have been outdated or something. Which would explain the flash drive troubles (ntfs is an easily damaged fs in my experience anyway). I did some more testing with a fat32 drive and couldn't reproduce any file corruption.

 

As for the HFS+ volume; I noticed that putting my Macbook to sleep (with video files opened) causes corruption when reinitializing. Maybe the specific drive has indeed sustained some volume level corruption. I'll backup the files to dvd, reformat and do some more testing.

 

Thanks!

 

 

P.s. I'm not grasping the difference between continuously and continually yet. They both mean 'all the time, without interruptions' right? See:

 

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/continually

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/continuously

 

Care to elaborate so I may understand the difference better? Tnx in advance.