Occasional Error When Copying Files To Usb

I just tried to copy many files (about 1.5GB of jpegs and 1 GB video) to a USB drive from my Windows 8.1 computer. What I was copying consisted of several folders and also about 20 files that were not in folders.
I believe towards the end of the copying process, I started getting messages that certain files could not be copied. Windows gave me these messages one by one, and provided options of "try again," "skip," "skip all," and "cancel."

I also remember this happening another time.

Both time I was able to solve the problem by skipping the items and copying again.

But, I wonder if I should do some more investigation, instead of sweeping it under the rug.

 

In the first instance, format the USB stick and try again.

If you still get the same error after format, try it with another usb drive. It is possible that your thumb drive has become faulty. USB thumb drives are not very durable

 

I would also recommend launching a command prompt and running chkdsk x: /r (where x: is your flash drive) to have Windows scan the drive for bad sectors and lock out any that it finds.

 

First, let me point something out. When I tried to copy the folder the first time, I was then unable to delete the folder (I wanted to re-copy the whole file so that I wouldn't have to sort out exactly which files did not copy and copy just those). When I tried to delete the "incomplete" folder, my computer asked me if I want to delete the file without sending it to the recycling bin. I said yes but the file still appeared in the directory. So, I clicked on it to open it, and I got a message saying something like it couldn't be opened because it's corrupted.

Now, back to some of the suggestions in this thread. When I did chkdsk
1) it says that one of the folders "is cross-linked on allocation 131185"
2) for another folder it says, " unrecoverable error in folder... Convert folder to file (Y/N)?" I pressed Y.
Note: item 1 is from the second time that I copied the files
item 2 is from the first time that I copied the files
3) File and folder verification process is complete.
4) Convert lost file chains to files (Y/N)?
I haven't answered (4) yet.

 

I answered "Y" to convert lost file chains to files.
5) Windows made corrections to the file system.

The end result is that the USB disk seems to have mostly recovered the files that were in the "unsuccessful" copy, except there is 1 folder missing (but the total number of files is still correct). My second attempt to copy the folder is no where in sight. But, there is now a folder "FOUND.000"

 

That flash drive is seriously screwed up. Format the drive like risk_reversal said in post #2. Be sure to uncheck the "Quick format" box so that Windows will write to every sector instead of just writing a new, blank root directory. This will take a bit longer, but it lets Windows catch sectors that are unusable. Then run the check disk command again from post #3. If it still finds errors after the drive has been completely reformatted, then I'd throw the flash drive in the trash - it's untrustworthy.

 

I would also make a new folder on the main computer and try to copy the same batch to there. See if it throws the same error there. If not, then you know its the usb. If you get the error you know it is really the files have errors.