'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

[The Liquidator]

Hi

I'm trying to copy some data (photos) from my hard drive to a 2gb usb key so they can be viewed in a picture frame. Simple copying and pasting stops after about 60 Mb with a simple "access denied" message with no clue as to what is going on. Using Grsync is no more successful, but is at least more helpful- The error message reports that there is no more space on the disk, whereas the properties of the disk contradict this, reporting only 60 odd Mb to have been used.

Interestingly I tried the previous week to copy and paste the same files to a 2Gb SD card and exactly the same thing happened (although I didn't try grsync on that occasion).

Does anyone know why this is happening and even better how to fix it?

Thanks

ian

[vinnywright]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

last time I read a post about somthing like this it was dd to the rescue.

the mbr of the drive was reporting the rong free space so dd was used to zero the drive then I think reformat it.

I dont think just reformating will redo the mbr maby a repartitioning will though if you dont like dd .....I dont becose I'm not that familer with it.

but the poster sead it was good afterwords.

you have ben unmounting (safley removeing it) rite.

VINNY

[Qqmike]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

Yes, dd is an option. It will write zeros to the entire drive.

Or ... just start with a new partition table. Try GParted Live CD.
With the flash drive in, insert the GParted CD, re-boot into GParted, and see how GParted sees the flash drive. (The tab at top Devices> ) or the drop down list at the upper right (click the arrow to see all drives). If it is not seen immediately, then Devices > Refresh. (In GParted, you also have a terminal if you need it, for example, to run sudo fdisk -lu to list your drives: at top, double click Terminal.)

Just to be safe and to start from scratch, build a new MBR partition table: Devices > Partition Table, and accept the default MSDOS type. Then repartition it, probably just one FAT32 partition (or whatever you wish). Exit out and reboot. Try your copy again.

The fact that it happened before with an SD card, though, is unsettling (suggesting the problem may rest with the files you are copying, some extra dat is being picked up or some such).


GParted (Live CD, USB, HD)
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
New Manual. New man page. See Documentation:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/documentation.php

[The Liquidator]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

Thanks, both, I'll take a look at your suggestions tonight.

It's an important little job this - the files in question are pictures of my brothers recent wedding - there's a couple of hundred, that the photographer burned to CD and that I've copied onto the hard drive, and the ones that didn't make it into the album are to go on the usb stick.

I had wondered whether there were a few dodgy files. However, once the copying routine gets stopped, it is impossible to paste anything into it - I get the simple "access denied" error message. Right clicking on the drive icon (whether in 'buntu or in my Win XP VM) shows only a tiny proportion of the drive to be in used, so my brain hurts!

Out of interest I might just move them to my USB Hard drive and see what happens if I attempt the exercise via the WIN XP VM. I have a sneaking suspicion that it might just work. If it does that will indeed be odd, especially as it specifically says on the USB stick packaging that it's Linux compatible. I might also do a live boot of ubuntu and see what happens with that. Will post back.

Thanks

[Qqmike]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

Yes, I thought the same: just copy them into the same HD or into another HD and see how it all goes.
Suspicious that the same files are not going into two different media (SD and USB flash drive).
My suggestion about making a new partition table removes the (unlikely) possibility that the flash drive's partition table is faulty. But what about the SD card you tried?

[The Liquidator]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

The SD card was given to my brother by another wedding guest, who gave him the photo frame. There were already some photos on the card and so when the first attempt at transfer failed half-way through I decided it was too risky to mess too much. It is now in the frame happily playing the guests pictures and half of the official ones

Actually I wonder if this is connected....

My wife has an aspire one netbook running UNR 9.04. I downloaded 9.10 and created a USB boot disk, which loads fine on my machine (Dell Inspiron 630m laptop) but for some reason was not detected by her Acer. I used another USB stick (the UNR 9.04 stick) deleted everything and did a direct copy of the files from one to the other. The result was reported as boot disk failure when I attempted to boot my machine with the alternative stick.

Not conclusive that there is a problem with my system but I wonder whether it's pointing ion that direction rather than the files. Will report back when I have had a chance to play.

Thanks

ian

[vinnywright]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

My wife has an aspire one netbook running UNR 9.04. I downloaded 9.10 and created a USB boot disk, which loads fine on my machine (Dell Inspiron 630m laptop) but for some reason was not detected by her Acer. I used another USB stick (the UNR 9.04 stick) deleted everything and did a direct copy of the files from one to the other. The result was reported as boot disk failure when I attempted to boot my machine with the alternative stick.

just copeying the files over wouldent nesesarley make it bootable!!

it's sounding like file system coruption to me but that's just me.

I'd go for a repartitioning and reformating of the stick and then see what happens

VINNY

[skunk]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

The errors you are seeing sound like the symptoms of unplugging the USB drive before all writes are synched. As far as I know the only way to fix it is to reformat the drive.

[The Liquidator]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

What you say makes perfect sense but for one thing - I use the "safe unmount" procedure as a ritual so I discounted non-syncing as a possibility from the outset. So far as the boot disk is concerned, I did a straight copy of all the files from a working boot disk - the files look identical in size and structure so it ought to have worked.


IIRC the last time I reformatted one of these things the partition manager would not do it and I had to fire up the XP VM. I'm beginning to wonder whether something is going very subtly wrong under the bonnet. I'll find out for sure tonight I think.

[vinnywright]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

What you say makes perfect sense but for one thing - I use the "safe unmount" procedure as a ritual so I discounted non-syncing as a possibility from the outset. So far as the boot disk is concerned, I did a straight copy of all the files from a working boot disk - the files look identical in size and structure so it ought to have worked.

onley if the boot flag is still set and it's using something like syslinux that dosent half to be installed like lilo or grub.

sory not trying to be a SA just offering my thoughts I KNOW you'r no n00b.........LOL

VINNY

[The Liquidator]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

[
sory not trying to be a SA just offering my thoughts I KNOW you'r no n00b.........LOL

VINNY

Didn't think that for a second Vinny. Thanks for your input - it's most welcome!

[vinnywright]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

cool strangley enuff in looking for that syslinux on one of my sticks so I could remember it's name and refrence it I'v notesed that all of a suden my sticks are auto mounting and not leting me (safley remove) from in dolphin or the device notafyer widget??

I'm left having to sudo fdisk -l to find the /dev/name and sudo umount to escape them.

this has just started this week I'm shure as I use them quite offen

VINNY

EDIT: found the culpret auto mounting my usb sticks........XBMC I had installed it yesterday or day befor?? still serching for a way to stop it BUT I know who's doing it

[The Liquidator]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

Just to close this one off I got the job done but, sadly, the only thing that worked was the windows VM. I copied the files from the ext 3 partition on my USB HDD to a FAT 32 partition on the same disk and and then the VM was able to copy them to the pendrive.

One observation I made was that Windows appeared to do this rather more slowly than Kubuntu so I wonder whether that is the issue i.e the files were hitting the drive faster than it could handle them and part way through it responded "enough"! Pure speculation though. Is that feasible do you think?

Ian

[Loadus]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

... pictures of my brothers recent are to go on the usb stick ...

Just as a sidenote: don't save anything important to a USB stick, it's meant for a quick swap of information - not longtime storage. It WILL fail at a random moment (Murphy's Law: usually happens when you're moving very important stuff from/to it).

I'm just making sure that your bro's pics survive ...

One good place to save photos is the internet. Use something like Google picasa or similar service to upload the entire album and let them take care of the backup.

[The Liquidator]

Re: 'buntu wrongly thinks flash drive is full

I do my backups to a USB HDD although your idea is a good one that's certainly worth investigating - thanks.

Just to clarify - the USB stick was to give to my brother so he can play it into in the photo frame someone gave him - he has not experienced the joy () of having a computer!