[iyonix-support] Re: Pen drive problems after upgrading

  • From: "David J. Ruck" <druck@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: iyonix-support@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2007 19:31:35 GMT

On 21 Mar 2007 Nick Roberts <tigger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 3. Dismounted the pendrive and removed it. Then re-inserted it, waited
> for the icon to appear, opened the disc and double-clicked the file.
> ArtWorks reported an "Abort on data transfer" and quit. NB - the file
> on the pendrive showed exactly the same size as the original.

What you are seeing is probably minor corruption to the file, but Artworks
is very sensitive to the contents its binary files, where as corruption in
text file may only be one letter, and go unnoticed by the handling
application.

> This is repeatable.
> 
> There is no doubt that the problem is the file itself, rather than
> running it from the pendrive, as copying back to the HD and running it
> from there caused the same problem. I've tried with other files of
> similar size (e.g. a JPEG of 850,897 bytes) and this survived a two-way
> trip (with removal).

Use a binary file compare utility on the two files, check if there is a 
single bit/byte change or whether its been more comprehensively scrambled.
The former indicates a faulty memory location on the drive, the later
indicates data transfer issues.
 
> However, if I copy another file to the pendrive first (the JPEG
> referred to above), then copy the Artworks file, the file survives a
> dismount/remove/insert cycle.

Which would cause the Artworks file to use a different location on the drive,
possibly avoiding the faulty location.
 
> This led me to the conclusion that the pendrive itself may be faulty,
> so I tried exactly the same thing from my WinXP box: I copied the
> Artworks file to the PC overthe network, then copied the file from the
> PC to the pendrive, dismounted the pendrive from the PC and mounted it
> on my Iyonix. In this case ArtWorks would load the file without a
> problem. This also is repeatable.

> Does this demonstrate that it is not the pendrive at fault? i.e. do PCs
> and DOSFS use different mechanisms for deciding what part of the
> pendrive to use for a file, or does the SCSI interface protect the OS's
> from that level of detail?

The PC will use a different allocation strategy so may also avoid the faulty
location.

> <Aside>
> This also confirmed something I had noticed before with floppy discs -
> long filenames that appear fine on the Iyonix frequently appear
> truncated to 6 chars + tilde + digit + extension on the PC. It appears
> that what DOSFS thinks the format should be is somewhat at variance
> with what WinNT and WinXP think it should be.

DOSFS's handling of longfile names is flawed and can cause minor corruption
of directory structures but it only results in the long names being lost.
This can be repaired with PC tools. 

Cheers
---Dave

-- 
____________________________________________________________________________

  David J. Ruck    Phone: +44- (0)7974 108301    Email: druck@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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