Usb flash drive errors�?

Hi all

I have a USB 64Gig flash drive that i use for keeping certain date like films and Music on which basically has been working perfectly.

So i have a iMac and my Mother has just purchased and New Windows PC with Windows 8 on it,so i have put a lot of the type of music she likes on the sick,various albums and a few films and all looked ok.

Yesterday i proceeded to Wales to set up her new PC,now i have never seen Windows 8 working and it looked nothing like the previous versions of windows i was better used to.

Anyway thats not the question,when i put the Usb Flash drive in the side of the PC and clicked on the drive all the music was listed,all the albums and all the other stuff,however once i clicked on the album there was nothing inside,no mp3 or any data.

Now i thought it was a Mac/Windows PC thing and there was a conflict or whatever,anyway i got home late last night and today i put the flash usb drive into my Mac and i found exactly the same,all the file names but nothing in them,so i tried to erase the disk and start again but kept getting can not erase disk error,finally after ejecting it and putting it in other usb ports i erased the files.

But before i did all that i deleted the content and added them all over again,clicked inside each folder and all the mp3 tracks were there,however as soon as i ejected the usb flash drive and then put it back in again the folders where there but again nothing inside them.

The format of the Disk is MS-DOS [FAT] and i think thats what its suppose to be to be compatible with both Windows and Macs�.Anyway any suggestion ?

I have yet to transfer the data back over again at this point because I'm sick of ejecting the disk and wasting 30 minutes to find nothing in the files only the original folder names of the albums i added.

When i do add each album which are copied over to the usb flash drive and look inside once copied all are there,but if i eject the disk and then put it back in all have gone.

Any simple suggestions would be helpful,I'm not to technically minded so keep it really simple if you got a answer.

Many thanks.

I had a similar issue with a USB stick that is my 'tool box' when fixing other peoples PCs. Originally used with just Windows but now that some of them have Macs I added a folder for some Apple OS programs and initially encountered the same problem as you.

Create a folder on the Mac desktop and copy into it everything on the stick. Reformat the stick in the Mac (using the Disk Utility program) again to MS-DOS (FAT). Copy everything back onto the stick.

You should then find that data copied from the Mac will show up fully when added to the stick

Cheers for that matey funny thing is when i downloaded the firmware for the Playstation 4 thats just got released to the usb stick the instructions was to create a folder called Sony and another inside that called update.

So I'm kind of guessing instead of just dragging films on to the usb flash drive like avi files and mp3 as they are i should make some folders within the usb stick and that may work.

So for Avi files make one and call it films and mp3s call it Music ?

I shall also test your method and i have already formatted the usb stick several times.

Anyway thanks for the info

Creating folders first on the stick or copying files straight onto it shouldn't make any difference. It does with Playstations because the Sony system looks for specific named folders.

The reason for my suggestion was that I presumed you had originally formatted the stick in Windows OS and had not done so in the Mac.

Yeah that makes sense but i have had the mac for a couple of years and this 64 gig flash usb drive is only 3 months old but you wasn't to know �.Thanks anyway.

I Have made some folders within the flash drive and added stuff,ejected the flash drive several times and then inserted it again to see if the media is still there and it seems all ok at present so fingers crossed.

Things may change once i turn up at my Mothers with her Music on here Windows PC.