Copying to USB Issue

Walkerie · 20 Feb 2017 at 11:26

Trying to back up all my mums photos but having an issue tried a couple of different USB's

20 gigs worth moving to a fresh USB drive - takes several hours (fine she has an old pc)

but then when it's finished, plug into new pc and there is nothing on it, or sometimes just the folders with something's in and something's not.

Any ideas?

bledd · 20 Feb 2017 at 11:27

USB stick? Where did you get it from..?

Walkerie · 20 Feb 2017 at 11:36

bledd said:
USB stick? Where did you get it from..?

Can't remember - they are a reputable brand though. (Not that I can remember that either)

bimbleuk · 20 Feb 2017 at 12:53

Some non-brand or too good to be true deals are fake ones that report more storage than actual.

Other than that try a few directories first and make sure to eject the USB device from the task bar and if it has an activity light make sure that's stopped flashing. Small files are very inefficient on USB sticks so maybe download 7Zip and compress the files first to a single large file before copying over. Though that may take a while also on a slow system ti should be faster than copying individual files to the device.

bledd · 20 Feb 2017 at 13:12

Walkerie said:
Can't remember - they are a reputable brand though. (Not that I can remember that either)

Could be 'fake' USB sticks. Ebay and Amazon resellers are fake 9 times out of 10, especially if the price is a fair whack beneath what you'd expect to pay. The fakes look very convincing.

brendy · 20 Feb 2017 at 13:46

Have you tried copying in stages then testing?