i have had a problem with mandrake10 that completely wipes all data from a usb key & usb mp3 player. it seems to have happened on removal of the key. when you first put the key in the data is there. but remove it and put it in again and all data is gone! i have not go a clue what is wrong. anyone else experienced problems like this?

[moved from Hardware by spinynorman]

Welcome to the board.

I believe you can lose data if you remove the key without unmounting it first.

yep but its unlikely .... its probably still there but the mount is stale and so it doesnt remount and it looks like its wiped.

I might be wrong but heck its worth a go!!!

try unmounting specifically then remount the same device manually...

also try from CLI, konqueror tends to chache and delay writes so it looks empty but if you look from the CLI it can be seen.

Ive unplugged many times and not lost data (its still not recommended)

of course you could be unlucky!

As I was saying...

... if you're writing to the device - otherwise you'll probably just confuse it!

Thanks, Gowator.

You always need to eject/unmount the device before removing.

On my computer it doesnt write anything to the SD card or my usb stick until I tell it to unmount.

I would be interested in finding out how you do that. I have problems with my USB HD and wonder If I could do something like that with it.