3

I have bought a new pen-drive that is 512GB. I saw it didn't have a option to format to fat32 so I used a tool the do this. But after a wile I found that this was happening to some of my folders.

enter image description here

So I thought this may be just a one off so I tried to delete them but they wouldn't delete even through command prompt. What also puzzles me is that the creation date can be 1989 to 2040 so I don't know what could be happening here.

enter image description here Then I saw that this had happened to a few folders. My question is if any one else has experienced this or knows how I could stop this happening to my files in the future. Thanks.

3
  • Why FAT32, Linux supports NTFS, its support is table so thats not the reason. There are better solutions then FAT32.
    – Ramhound
    May 22, 2014 at 18:04
  • @Ramhound Can Linux read/write NTFS natively.
    – 09stephenb
    May 22, 2014 at 18:08
  • The NTFS driver implement in most Linux distrubutions has been stable for almost a decade which you could have easily researched yourself by the way
    – Ramhound
    May 22, 2014 at 18:10

1 Answer 1

2

Yes, the file system is corrupted, the data you are seeing is based on corrupted data on the drive (hence the made up/gobbledy-gook file names and dates).

There is a few reason this can happen, here's the most common I've seen: 1) A device you inserted it into can't handle the file-system properly for some reason, and writes to it incorrectly. 2) The drive is pulled out/unplugged while being written to. 3) The drive is damaged (physically), or faulty.

Assuming only this drive exhibits this problem, and it's not a regular occurrence, then you'll probably just need to format the file-system again and start over.

If it keeps happening, then the drive is most likely bad and needs to be replaced.

4
  • Thanks I did try to format it to a format it didn't natively support so that must be the cause of the problem.
    – 09stephenb
    May 22, 2014 at 17:35
  • Can FAT32 even actually supports drives this large?
    – Ramhound
    May 22, 2014 at 18:00
  • @Ramhound FAT32 should be able to handle up to like 2TB, but no individual files larger than 4GB. Windows format tool doesn't let you pick FAT32 for drives over 32GB though, because the tool itself doesn't handle it properly. I would assume they never fixed/changed that because of NTFS. :) May 22, 2014 at 18:12
  • @techie007 - Alright. It was just a thought I had. I didn't even both looking it up because FAT32 is worthless in todays 4GB+ world.
    – Ramhound
    May 22, 2014 at 18:20

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .