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Flash (USB thumb) drives when left plugged in

Apr 23, 2014 7:54PM PDT

If anyone has seen the Windows message at boot that a drive needs to be checked for consistency and a flash drive is plugged in, be aware that hidden protected files might be written to that drive. You need to go to folder options and uncheck the box to hide protected OS and hidden files. You may find a folder called "FOUND.000" which will contain the results of a chkdsk that, if the drive is a smaller one, might be occupying enough space to be worth deleting.

Discussion is locked

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The files might be written to the drive
Apr 26, 2014 2:25AM PDT

automatically? Just because the Flash Drive is plugged in at start up?

Digger

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Yep...that's what happens
Apr 26, 2014 7:24PM PDT

We have some folks wondering where their flash drive space went. I suspect that, depending on how many files are already on the drive, the hidden/protected folder would be larger or smaller. On one of my 16 gb drives, the folder occupied almost 400 mb which wouldn't be significant unless free space was getting short. That particular drive only had about 4 gb used so the % occupied by the chkdsk folder was rather significant.

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Well, this stuff
Apr 30, 2014 4:50AM PDT

still confuses me. This happens with flash drives but, not external HDD's ?

Digger

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(NT) Actually, I've seen the same with USB externals.
Apr 30, 2014 7:27AM PDT
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I yank it out quickly
Apr 30, 2014 4:36AM PDT

so I never really knew what might happen to it.