Flash drives won't play video files on 8GB & 16GB drives, but will play on 2GB drives

[Bear003]

Hisun 8GB USB 2.0 Flash drive on Windows XP SP3 computer. The drive works well with any other type of file, except a video file. .AVI .WMV etc... I have 4 Flash drives two out of the four will not play video files and if you just use them to copy the video files from one computer to another they cause the video files to become useless even once back on the hdd. The other one that does this is a 16GB drive generic no name brand.

My two flash drives that do work just fine with video files are my Kingston data traveler 100 2GB and my DaneElec 2GB drive.

Both of the smaller 2GB drives use FAT while the larger drives use FAT32 file system. I tried formating the larger drives to NTFS but Windows will not complete the format. I tried changing them to FAT instead of FAT32, but this is not an option probably due to their size.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with codecs and the like. These files play like I said on the HDD and on my smaller 2GB USB flash drives.

Any help, links etc will be appreciated.

Thanks!

[mohan007]

You need to format the usb drive with normal format by not selecting the quick format option. You then copy the video file to the flash disk. I think you will be able to play the video file

[Bear003]

I appreciate the response, but I've tried formatting it just about every possible way there is including almost always not using quick format. Doesn't work.

Further about the issue. These video files not only don't play and the drive corrupts them, but the drive has to be reformatted to make it work with other files after having put video files on it. I think it may be possible that I simply got two bad or not so great larger flash drives. Not sure.

They both work fine with lots and lots of any other kind of file I've tried unless you try to exceed the 4GB limit for a file size on a drive of this type. That doesn't work either. Discovered that trying to use the 16GB drive to backup a 10GB HDD on an old 98se computer.

Thanks again!

[mohan007]

You may need to check the software in your system. Well you can also try formatting the pen drive in other system, if it does not format in other system also, then you may need to give the pen drive to the appropriate vendor if it has a warrenty.

[OlyComputers]

The one thing that pops into my mind, since you've already done all the troubleshooting steps I'd usually suggest) is that they're just low quality drives with bad regions. Small files don't span very far and therefor only get a couple of the bad sections but large files become corrupted.

Have you tried small video files (under 5mb) to see if they're effected the same way?

Never hurts to run chckdsk

[Bear003]

Hi, thanks for the reply. I've been sick and haven't been able to get to this lately. I did try your chkdsk and smaller file suggestion. I didn't have a video that small, but I tried two just over 100 MB's the first one copied and played the second one would not play and it said it was probably corrupt. I remember playing with that Idea before on the 16GB drive. It seemed to work with 100MB and down video files but nothing larger. However, what's strange is that it will work just fine with 100MB and up program installation files without damaging them. I think that they are like you said just low quality drives which is probably why I got them at the lower price for the size they are. Name brand drives in the 8 and 16GB range are pretty high. I won these although brand new on eBay at far below the going average for say a Kingston or some other memory manufacturer name brand drive of the same size. I just wonder if anyone on here has a larger name brand drive 8GB and up and could try a video of say 500MB's and up on it. It's ultimately not that big of a deal to me. I don't really need it to transfer or play video I mostly use them for Program installation files and documentation, but I like to check things out thoroughly when I buy them. Thanks again.

Also, to the poster before about formatting on different computers I have formatted the 16GB drive on 3 different computers all with different OS's. Win98SE, Win2000SP4, WinXP PRO SP3, no difference.

Thanks for all the ideas.

[LuxHuts]

I'll be interested in hearing the results of your query because I had exactly the same experience with two 16GB flash drives bought on eBay for very low prices. All file types seemed to work properly except the various video files. When the videos were deleted, the flash drive would become corrupted and needed to be reformatted. On some attempts of copying video files to the flash, 10 or 12 of the first files would play, but not the rest. I'm wondering if the issue is just cheap drives or a real system incompatibility.

[ruthallison]

You need to format the usb drive with normal format by not selecting the quick format option. You then copy the video file to the flash disk. I think you will be able to play the video file

I also feel that you should format the usb drive then copy the video file to the flash disk.

[stuckstick]

i have the "hisun Data Traveller" 8GB flash drive and wanted to test a few things since i just picked it up...

Googling led me here and i decided to test and see if i was having the same issues re: video files

the answer: YES - and heres what i am using as a workaround

to be clear, i tried all of the suggestions above and my 809MB .avi file wouldn't play, was producing popups labeling the file corrupted etc whenever i tried to play with WMP10, WMP6.4, Nero Player, WinAMP player, and VLC, and also had to reformat the flash drive

NOTE: i did copy a 4.35GB folder containg DVD movie files and it played just fine using Cyberlink PowerDVD6 (my drive came formatted as FAT32 so i used the folder vs an .iso)

what i did was to create a .zip file using WinRAR (i suppose any file compressor will do) and once the file was compressed i copied it to the 8GB flash drive

i have to say that although i didnt time it im sure copying that file took at least 10 minutes, maybe more, compared with a much shorter time when the file was not compressed (estimated 2 mnutes)

i browsed to the flash drive, double clicked on the .zip file, WinRAR began to 'open' the file, and once the file was open* i double-clicked on the .avi file and it played as usual in WMP10

file size was now 753MB instead of 809MB and i think in future i will try creating the compressed file using 'store' mode vs 'compressed' mode because im hoping that may reduce the copy time from the hard drive to the flash drive

*('extracted' inside the .zip file - ie. i did not extract to a directory anywhere but instead just 'opened' the .zip file)

i hope this help someone, it may even be useful for .iso and other types of files

:)

[stuckstick]

ok i tried creating another .zip file and this time used 'store' mode instead of compressed - when i copied this 809MB file to the flash drive it took a hair under 16 minutes (!!)

to compare: i previously copied a 4.35GB DVD folder to the flash drive and it took just over 10 minutes

anyway, worked like a charm!

[reverendtotsy]

Hisun 8GB USB 2.0 Flash drive on Windows XP SP3 computer. The drive works well with any other type of file, except a video file. .AVI .WMV etc... I have 4 Flash drives two out of the four will not play video files and if you just use them to copy the video files from one computer to another they cause the video files to become useless even once back on the hdd. The other one that does this is a 16GB drive generic no name brand.

My two flash drives that do work just fine with video files are my Kingston data traveler 100 2GB and my DaneElec 2GB drive.

Both of the smaller 2GB drives use FAT while the larger drives use FAT32 file system. I tried formating the larger drives to NTFS but Windows will not complete the format. I tried changing them to FAT instead of FAT32, but this is not an option probably due to their size.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with codecs and the like. These files play like I said on the HDD and on my smaller 2GB USB flash drives.

Any help, links etc will be appreciated.

Thanks!

I'll try to make this quick.I had similar problem with my 8GB drive.Wouldn't copy 4+GB avi file on clean drive,but would anything smaller.Tried the formatting thing.Only option I saw on XP was Fat32.Went to my Vista machine,tried exFAT option.Copied the file on Vista, but when I went back to XP file did not even show up.Went back to Vista and formatted as NTFS.Completed format.Was able to copy and play file on both systems without a hitch.You may have already tried this but I didn't see any mention of you trying Vista to format.Try to find access to Vista machine and format .Fingers crossed

[Herb0515]

i have the "hisun Data Traveller" 8GB flash drive and wanted to test a few things since i just picked it up...

Googling led me here and i decided to test and see if i was having the same issues re: video files

the answer: YES - and heres what i am using as a workaround

to be clear, i tried all of the suggestions above and my 809MB .avi file wouldn't play, was producing popups labeling the file corrupted etc whenever i tried to play with WMP10, WMP6.4, Nero Player, WinAMP player, and VLC, and also had to reformat the flash drive

NOTE: i did copy a 4.35GB folder containg DVD movie files and it played just fine using Cyberlink PowerDVD6 (my drive came formatted as FAT32 so i used the folder vs an .iso)

what i did was to create a .zip file using WinRAR (i suppose any file compressor will do) and once the file was compressed i copied it to the 8GB flash drive

i have to say that although i didnt time it im sure copying that file took at least 10 minutes, maybe more, compared with a much shorter time when the file was not compressed (estimated 2 mnutes)

i browsed to the flash drive, double clicked on the .zip file, WinRAR began to 'open' the file, and once the file was open* i double-clicked on the .avi file and it played as usual in WMP10

file size was now 753MB instead of 809MB and i think in future i will try creating the compressed file using 'store' mode vs 'compressed' mode because im hoping that may reduce the copy time from the hard drive to the flash drive

*('extracted' inside the .zip file - ie. i did not extract to a directory anywhere but instead just 'opened' the .zip file)

i hope this help someone, it may even be useful for .iso and other types of files

:)

Hello, I had the same problem and went ahead and compressed the movie approx. 900 MB Avi file, saved it to the flash drive, then play it from there and it works just fine, now when you extract the file by double clicking on it are you extracting it to memory? is it really playing from the flash drive? if so why it won't play normally, compression adds about 30 minutes to be able to watch a movie on the big screen computer.

[Bear003]

Thanks for the reply, but I gave it a try with WinRar (my favorite compressions program) just as you did above except I did use store instead of compression. It didn't corrupt the drive, which was good at least, cut when it tried to run the file it said the video file was corrupt. :-(

Thanks again!

[dadrian]

What's the price difference between your drive and a cheap kingmax 16 GB, or a kingston? for a couple of bucks, you spend hours trying to make it work...