Detecting USB failures

At work we're occasionally suffering data loss due to things not being saved to usb sticks. As in, we save things onto usb and it seems to work fine, but the data is not there when the stick is plugged into another machine.

As far as I can see, there are multiple possible causes of this. Not ejecting the sticks properly before removing them could be one, but some people are swearing they've done this and still lost data. Other thing could be internal failures in the usb sticks, physical damage (some are a little bent), or faults within the machine and it's usb controller/ports.

I'm looking for any more information that any could provide about the subject. Are there known methods to test for failures in usb devices and ports? Do USB sticks have support for SMART similar to hard drives? is there software that can test the devices and interfaces to determine any faults ? Anything that could help with tracking the issue.

 

First question: After re-inserting the USB stick into a different PC, can the PC read/write to it without errors or warning messages? If so, the USB stick is not the problem.

Next, has the IT staff placed any blocking on uploading, downloading or copying files to/from a flash drive? It is possible to block some PCs and not others: The boss' PC might have full access while the office temp's PC is blocked.

Finally, there's the classic ID10T :-D problem on where people actually
save a document:

Almost every program (MS-Office, Quicken, etc.) has a default location it saves files to (C:/username/My Documents, C:/username/Quicken/QData, etc.). Even if you opened a draft copy from a flash drive, it's possible the revised copy is only being saved in the default ("C" Drive) location. The user must specify the flash drive as the save location (MY COMPUTER>flash drive letter) or find the revised file on the "C" drive, right click on it, choose "send to" (flash drive letter) and confirm they want to overwrite the old file with the same name.

Oh, and please don't be offended by the "ID10T" reference. I've made this mistake more than once when I was in a hurry. :banghead

 

Hi War,

Not much help but the failure mode for files that are being written when the device is removed is exactly as you describe. The last thing done in a write is to write the directory information so nothing is written about the new file. Test the stick by right clicking it and running scan x:. Any lost files found indicate that someone is removing the stick before the write is done. They are usually called "Orphan files".

Good Luck, Jim