Any reason a 4GB USB flash drive wouldn't work in a Mac mini?

[balane]

We log our poker player's hours at the casino on a Mac Mini running Windows XP. I've been backing the data up on an external USB hard drive and it always works fine. I got a little tired of carrying the drive around and wanted something smaller. Black Friday presented an opportunity to pick up a 4GB PNY Optima Pro Attache USB flash drive for cheap so I grabbed one.

I formated the drive to FAT32 on a Windows Vista machine at home. It also works on my Vista laptop and also on an XP laptop here. But when I stick this drive into the Mac Mini Windows XP machine at work it just hangs up the computer and simply will not function. I can't look at the files, I can't write to the drive, I can't format it on the Mac; nothing.

The package clearly says it works on Mac OS 8.6 or greater, I don't know if that even matters since we're running XP.

Before I return this flash drive and try another one is there something I need to know to get it working properly?

Thanks in advance.

Edit: And the drive does seem to me to be a little doggy on my Wintel computers.

 

[timswim78]

nevermind

 

[TheStu]

Does it happen to have the u3 software? I have found that can cause issues with systems. I had a 2GB Sandisk jumpdrive that would work in every one of my classmate's systems except those running the Dell Latitude D600s... which was about 30% of the class.

 

[KeithP]

Are you plugging the flash drive into the back of the Mini or the extra USB slot on the keyboard? If you are using the keyboard USB connector you may want to try one of the slots on the back of the machine. It could be the flash drive is drawing too much power which the USB keyboard hub doesn't supply.

-KeithP