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AUGW Flash Drive likes PC better!

Avatar Rick Churchill
When my AUGW USB stick stopped working Mick kindly gave me another but that too has now failed. I was transferring files to the device when it suddenly stopped working. The USB flash drive disappeared from Finder and on re-insertion is no longer recognised by the MacBook using Finder or the Disc Utility. When I put it in my PC it mounts and all the files can be read. When I tried the original I was surprised to find it too could be accessed by the PC.

In the PC I can read files on the drive but when I came to write then I got the error
“E:\ is not accessible. A device which does not exist was specified”
so obviously something was scrambled within the filing system. On unmounting (“Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media”) and reinserting into the PC I get the message that the device is faulty before the files are displayed and can still be read.

I reformatted one of the drives in the PC using FAT32, the same as was provided and now the device works in both computers. I have not reformatted the other drive yet so I can still experiment. Can anyone hazard a guess why the PC is able to mount the drive so it can be reformatted and made useful again whereas the MacBook cannot?

Re: AUGW Flash Drive likes PC better!

Avatar Mick Burrell
FAT32 is a Windows format which the Mac can read but perhaps, being a "foreign" format, the Mac is less able to handle slight glitches.

It would be interesting to see how they fared if you now formatted to a Mac format - you'd lose the ability to use it in your PC though.

Re: AUGW Flash Drive likes PC better!

Avatar Rick Churchill
Thanks Mick, I thought I would leave the other one in its strange state to see if there were a way that MacOS could “bring it back from the dead” like the PC appears to be able to do but you’re probably right that this is because FAT32 is a native PC format.

I reformatted the first drive FAT32 because that was the original format but I would most likely reformat it exFAT so I could use the drive to transfer large video files. I’ll probably do as you suggest and reformat the other to Mac OS Extended (HSF+). I note that the Mac will format drives ex-FAT but not FAT32 and not, for some reason, the new Apple File System, APFS.

Re: AUGW Flash Drive likes PC better!

Avatar Tony Still
I would advise against formatting a thumb drive as anything but FAT/exFAT simply because it is the convention for such devices. macOS includes special features to make them work transparently (all those little duplicate files starting with "._" in front of the file name).

I doubt that the device's format is relevant to your failures in reading/writing and I'm a little concerned that you have had problems with two drives. If possible, try using a different USB port and monitor for recurring faults.

Re: AUGW Flash Drive likes PC better!

Avatar Trevor Hewson
FWIW my AUGW USB stick didn't live very long either. However, I didn't have Rick's determination to try to resurrect it, so can't add anything else.

Re: AUGW Flash Drive likes PC better!

Avatar Euan Williams
Here the AUGW USB eventually managed to absorb a few MB of data (ever more slowly) and eventually stopped. Reformatting tried a couple of times (mostly FAT) but to no good effect. What a bummer. My USB3 thumbdrives work like greased lightning whatever the format.

Re: AUGW Flash Drive likes PC better!

Avatar Tony Still
Mine still works though it is slow (USB2 probably being the issue there). However, perhaps they're just poor quality sticks.

I have a stick, USB2 again, that I bought from Crucial (the memory people). That works but is desperately slow (c.10 seconds to write a 2kB (yes, kilobyte)) file. If Crucial can produce that, it may be that there are just lots of lousy devices out there.
 
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