Reformating a flash drive maps bad sectors?

[Muse]

My Sandisk Sansa m250 Digital Audio MP3 Player 2GB is acting nutty, tracks cut from here to there, into other tracks, WTF. So, I figure I should reformat it. When you do a full format with a HD, I believe bad sectors are mapped and avoided when later in use. Is something similar done for flash memory?

 

[Muse]

Anyone?

 

[Auric]

Maybe so but there is no harm in format anyway. It could be that the file system is corrupt. If wanting to avoid copying everything, first try reindexing if possible.

 

[Muse]

Maybe so but there is no harm in format anyway. It could be that the file system is corrupt. If wanting to avoid copying everything, first try reindexing if possible.

Yeah, obviously a reformat's a good idea. Don't know how to reindex it. How would I do that? It would save me trouble to rewriting files to it.

Anyway, I'm still curious if a flash drive is capable of mapping "bad sectors" or the equivalent, assuming there is an equivalent for flash memory. I figured someone here would know.

 

[Muse]

So, I need to use it today, had to do something. Connected to this laptop and checked out options in WinXP Explorer, Properties/Tools/Error Checking.

Check Disk Options:

[ ] Automatically fix file system errors

[ ] Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors

I checked both of the above options and ran it. A therm bar progressed slowly and after a while a little window pops up to say it's done. It offers no report, no clue what it did, whether it found and fixed any problems. However, the file I was playing the other day (a 3 hour MP3) is so far playing fine, way past where it jumped suddenly to the middle of another MP3 while it was playing. So far so good, so I'll continue to use it without a reformat.

 

[Charles Kozierok]

The Windows disk scanner is fairly opaque. Next time open a prompt and run chkdsk, it will tell you more about what it did.

 

[Muse]

The Windows disk scanner is fairly opaque. Next time open a prompt and run chkdsk, it will tell you more about what it did.

Ah, OK, I'll give that a try. Thanks.