Windows 7: USB Drive Phantom Problem

Hello:

I have a USB drive that I use for transferring data from system
to system. Occasionally, when I mount it on my Windows 7 system,
Windows claims that there is a problem with the drive and wants to
scan it. It never finds anything wrong, I have never detected any
data loss. When this happens, it tends to happen a number of
consecutive times.

I am very careful to Safely Remove Hardware before unmounting the
drive from any system so that is not it.

Any ideas what is going on and what I can do about this?

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

On 13/03/2012 12:12 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I have a USB drive that I use for transferring data from system
> to system. Occasionally, when I mount it on my Windows 7 system,
> Windows claims that there is a problem with the drive and wants to
> scan it. It never finds anything wrong, I have never detected any
> data loss. When this happens, it tends to happen a number of
> consecutive times.
>
> I am very careful to Safely Remove Hardware before unmounting the
> drive from any system so that is not it.
>
> Any ideas what is going on and what I can do about this?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Gene Wirchenko


Do you plug into the same port every time, or occasionally in a
different port? If the latter, then you may be confusing Windows in some
way. Or so I surmise, since my list of drives includes "M: Removable
Media", an external optical drive that is switched on. It looks to me
like W7 creates a placeholder for a USB device the first time you
connect it.

HTH
Wolf K.

On 13/03/2012 1:03 PM, Wolf K wrote:
> On 13/03/2012 12:12 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>> Hello:
>>
>> I have a USB drive that I use for transferring data from system
>> to system. Occasionally, when I mount it on my Windows 7 system,
>> Windows claims that there is a problem with the drive and wants to
>> scan it. It never finds anything wrong, I have never detected any
>> data loss. When this happens, it tends to happen a number of
>> consecutive times.
>>
>> I am very careful to Safely Remove Hardware before unmounting the
>> drive from any system so that is not it.
>>
>> Any ideas what is going on and what I can do about this?
>>
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Gene Wirchenko
>
>
> Do you plug into the same port every time, or occasionally in a
> different port? If the latter, then you may be confusing Windows in some
> way. Or so I surmise, since my list of drives includes "M: Removable
> Media", an external optical drive that is switched on. It looks to me
> like W7 creates a placeholder for a USB device the first time you
> connect it.
>
> HTH
> Wolf K.

Sorry, that should read "..is NOT switched on". Selective inattention,
aka "We red what we intended, not what we typed."

HTH
Wolf K.

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 13:06:44 -0400, Wolf K <>
wrote:

>On 13/03/2012 1:03 PM, Wolf K wrote:
>> On 13/03/2012 12:12 PM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>>> Hello:
>>>
>>> I have a USB drive that I use for transferring data from system
>>> to system. Occasionally, when I mount it on my Windows 7 system,
>>> Windows claims that there is a problem with the drive and wants to
>>> scan it. It never finds anything wrong, I have never detected any
>>> data loss. When this happens, it tends to happen a number of
>>> consecutive times.
>>>
>>> I am very careful to Safely Remove Hardware before unmounting the
>>> drive from any system so that is not it.
>>>
>>> Any ideas what is going on and what I can do about this?

>> Do you plug into the same port every time, or occasionally in a
>> different port? If the latter, then you may be confusing Windows in some

Usually the same port. I can not say "always", but it is close.
(My Windows 7 box has two USB ports, and it is easier to reach the
left one.) I am pretty sure that it has always been the left port
recently.

>> way. Or so I surmise, since my list of drives includes "M: Removable
>> Media", an external optical drive that is switched on. It looks to me
>> like W7 creates a placeholder for a USB device the first time you
>> connect it.

I do not know about that as my USB use is simple: memory stick
only. The same drive letter gets assigned each time.

>Sorry, that should read "..is NOT switched on". Selective inattention,
>aka "We red what we intended, not what we typed."

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko

Same thing happens here.

My Corsair Flash Voyager is formatted FAT32.
I plug it into several XP Pro laptops with no problems but plugging
into Windows 7 Pro the same message comes up.

I did allow Windows 7 to "process" it and then removed it and plugged
it in again and I got the same message requesting a scan.
Windows 7 does not even know what it just did.
I always plug the USB flash into the same USB port.
My Windows 7 has all the latest service packs and updates.

After Win 7 scan processing, I plugged back into an XP Pro machine and
got no messages there and everything was fine.
Back to Windows 7 and the message came up again.

Maybe because the flash drive was formatted FAT32 and not NTFS ???
Some flash drives don't allow NTFS formatting.

Anyway I now ignore the message and just cancel it.

BTW I never use the "Safely Remove Hardware" and never have had a
problem. This ever since flash drives became available.

--
Noah's Ark was built by amateurs,
The Titanic was built by professionals.
Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream ...
Life is but a dream!

On 14/03/2012 6:57 AM, BeeJ wrote:
> Same thing happens here.
>
> My Corsair Flash Voyager is formatted FAT32.
> I plug it into several XP Pro laptops with no problems but plugging into
> Windows 7 Pro the same message comes up.
>
> I did allow Windows 7 to "process" it and then removed it and plugged it
> in again and I got the same message requesting a scan.
> Windows 7 does not even know what it just did.
> I always plug the USB flash into the same USB port.
> My Windows 7 has all the latest service packs and updates.
>
> After Win 7 scan processing, I plugged back into an XP Pro machine and
> got no messages there and everything was fine.
> Back to Windows 7 and the message came up again.
>
> Maybe because the flash drive was formatted FAT32 and not NTFS ???
> Some flash drives don't allow NTFS formatting.
>
> Anyway I now ignore the message and just cancel it.
>
> BTW I never use the "Safely Remove Hardware" and never have had a
> problem. This ever since flash drives became available.
>

haven't found a drive that will format ntfs

On 14/03/2012 3:12 AM, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I have a USB drive that I use for transferring data from system
> to system. Occasionally, when I mount it on my Windows 7 system,
> Windows claims that there is a problem with the drive and wants to
> scan it. It never finds anything wrong, I have never detected any
> data loss. When this happens, it tends to happen a number of
> consecutive times.
>
> I am very careful to Safely Remove Hardware before unmounting the
> drive from any system so that is not it.
>
> Any ideas what is going on and what I can do about this?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Gene Wirchenko


Have a look at the MS fixit solutions there is one that covers this and
its a simple fix.

Rob wrote:
> On 14/03/2012 6:57 AM, BeeJ wrote:
>> Same thing happens here.
>>
>> My Corsair Flash Voyager is formatted FAT32.
>> I plug it into several XP Pro laptops with no problems but plugging into
>> Windows 7 Pro the same message comes up.
>>
>> I did allow Windows 7 to "process" it and then removed it and plugged it
>> in again and I got the same message requesting a scan.
>> Windows 7 does not even know what it just did.
>> I always plug the USB flash into the same USB port.
>> My Windows 7 has all the latest service packs and updates.
>>
>> After Win 7 scan processing, I plugged back into an XP Pro machine and
>> got no messages there and everything was fine.
>> Back to Windows 7 and the message came up again.
>>
>> Maybe because the flash drive was formatted FAT32 and not NTFS ???
>> Some flash drives don't allow NTFS formatting.
>>
>> Anyway I now ignore the message and just cancel it.
>>
>> BTW I never use the "Safely Remove Hardware" and never have had a
>> problem. This ever since flash drives became available.
>>
>
> haven't found a drive that will format ntfs

There are ways to do that.

Once prepared, Windows is happy to work with it (NTFS USB key).

As long as the USB key has a single partition that is.
Windows refuses to mount multiple partitions on a USB key,
although you can put them on there with a Linux LiveCD. It
just mounts the first one it finds, and ignores the rest.

Right now, I have a single 1GB FAT16 partition on my 8GB USB
key, and that was put there by Linux too. Because Windows tools
refused to do that (like, the HP Formatter would bomb out if
asked to do that). If you need to prepare test cases, to see
how tolerant Windows is, then Linux is your friend. Between
fdisk and mkfs family, you can have a lot of fun.

If I needed to put a single 1GB FAT16 partition on the 8GB flash,
the trick to doing that, is to loopback mount a 1GB file, then
format with mkfs, unmount the loopback mount, then "dd" transfer
the 1GB image to the flash stick. So you can either create USB
flash with an MBR and primary partition table, or create
flash with just a single file system on it. You'd be amazed
how many stupid things you can do with them, many of which
won't work for one reason or another. (I was trying a whole
bunch of bootable media type experiments, which is why I was
trying these things out.)

Paul

Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I have a USB drive that I use for transferring data from system
> to system. Occasionally, when I mount it on my Windows 7 system,
> Windows claims that there is a problem with the drive and wants to
> scan it. It never finds anything wrong, I have never detected any
> data loss. When this happens, it tends to happen a number of
> consecutive times.
>
> I am very careful to Safely Remove Hardware before unmounting the
> drive from any system so that is not it.
>
> Any ideas what is going on and what I can do about this?
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Gene Wirchenko

I started here.

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/...-f8882d4946ea/

And the last post in that thread, points here.

http://www.sevenforums.com/general-d...ification.html

"Oh, after many hours of investigating this annoyance,
I found out how to stop the "Do you want to scan and fix"
problem. Simply goto

Start
type msconfig
Services Tab
Scroll down and Un check Shell Hardware Detection
Restart Windows
Done."

I hope such a change, doesn't have side effects... Like preventing
other corruptions from being detected.

Paul

On Tue, 13 Mar 2012 09:12:35 -0700, Gene Wirchenko wrote:
>
> Hello:
>
> I have a USB drive that I use for transferring data from system
> to system. Occasionally, when I mount it on my Windows 7 system,
> Windows claims that there is a problem with the drive and wants to
> scan it. It never finds anything wrong, I have never detected any
> data loss. When this happens, it tends to happen a number of
> consecutive times.
>
> I am very careful to Safely Remove Hardware before unmounting the
> drive from any system so that is not it.
>
> Any ideas what is going on and what I can do about this?

It's actually a pretty common annoyance. See here:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/35622...n-and-fix-for-
removable-drives-in-windows/

I haven't followed the advice to disable the warning because I
suspect, from the name of the service, that it may disable not just
Autoplay but Windows' detection of devices when I plug them in. I
haven't been motivated enough to test that suspicion. :-)


--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA
http://OakRoadSystems.com
Shikata ga nai...