[2cvsoo]

i have two usb mini (flash?) drives, a 1Gb and 2Gb, connected to my sony vaio laptop via a 4-port powered usb 2.0 PCMCIA notebook cardbus card. i have had the same problem connecting them directly into the back of the computer too. they both show up as removable disks (g and h).

i tried to copy a load of photos to one usb drive, but it only completed some of them. there was an error message about a particular photo, which i presumed was because it was a different format from jpg. but when i tried to do the the rest of the photos (jpg) i got the error message: 'error copying file or folder. cannot copy [filename without extension]: the directory or file cannot be created.' the same thing happens for both usb drives, and also if i try to copy an entire folder. i already had some word files on the 1Gb drive which have not been affected, but i can't copy any more word files onto the drive either.

however, if i go to copy one of the photos that did get copied to either usb drive, it says the file already exists and asks if i want to replace it. i have checked and both drives have loads of space available according to the pie-chart. i have also checked that the show hidden files box is checked. i can access the files on both drives.

i might have left one or other of the drives connected when the laptop went into standby mode, but this has never been a problem before, as far as i can recall. i did read something about file formats (FAT/FAT32/NTFS) and 'volumes' (?)on a different site, but i don't know much about computers and it didn't mean anything to me. if anyone can help i would be really and truly grateful.

cheers.
soo

Edited by 2cvsoo, 12 June 2007 - 11:43 AM.

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This problem can be caused by illegal characters in the filename but it can also be caused by having too many files in the root of the drive. If you have 512 items in the root, Windows will not let you put anything else on the drive regardless of the amount of free space available.

(the root of the drive is what you see when you go into My Computer and double-click on your drives G and H).

The solution to this is to move some files off the drive, make a new folder on the drive and move stuff into that. You can have many thousands of files as you like in a folder off the root, you just can't have more than 512 items in the root.

Edited by Neil Jones, 12 June 2007 - 03:24 PM.

[Neil Jones]

This problem can be caused by illegal characters in the filename but it can also be caused by having too many files in the root of the drive. If you have 512 items in the root, Windows will not let you put anything else on the drive regardless of the amount of free space available.

(the root of the drive is what you see when you go into My Computer and double-click on your drives G and H).

The solution to this is to move some files off the drive, make a new folder on the drive and move stuff into that. You can have many thousands of files as you like in a folder off the root, you just can't have more than 512 items in the root.

Edited by Neil Jones, 12 June 2007 - 03:24 PM.

[2cvsoo]

thanks so much neil - solved the problem completely. oh so easy when you know how.
thanks again.
soo