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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Using a Sandisk Usb Flash Drive On An Emac

MizSandlot - Jun 22, 2005 - 5:02 pm

The SanDisk says it's Mac X compatible. I have an eMac wit X.2.

Whenever I try to put something on the Flash drive I get an error message: Error -50.

What does this mean and how can I change it?

Thanks.

reiss91 - Jun 22, 2005 - 6:11 pm

Hello thank you for using macosx.com,
Im ot sure what the error means exactly but try going to your utility folder and to your Disk Utility. then from there select your disk that has the problem. Then go to the Erase tab and select the Mac osx extended(journaled) option from the pull down menu and press erase. This will completely erase the disk you have selected and will reformat it. I hope tihis helps

MizSandlot - Jun 23, 2005 - 12:25 am

" try going to your utility folder and to your Disk Utility. then from there select your disk that has the problem. "

I don't understand this advice. There is no disk (that I know of) with a problem.

The SanDisk jump/flash/backup drive which is Mac X compatible will not accept anything I try to download to it. When I try to download a file to the flash drive, I get the error message. I spoke with SanDisk. They think it's a Mac error message. The message is 'Error -50'. I don't know what that means or why it's happening.

Please help if you can.

Thanks,
SJ

nhmac - Jun 24, 2005 - 9:04 am

Hi, I will try to help you get this working.

First off, there are several different ways a USB flash drive can be formatted. If you are going to use them on both Mac and Windows, that's a kind of format (forget the exact name right now, I think maybe it's FAT32?) that should work on both platforms, but often has problems associated with it. If I recall, Sandisk recommends using Mac-only format unless you need the PC compatibility.

If you are only going to use it on the Mac, you can format it as a Mac disk (although personally I have never used the journaled format the other tech here recommended, on my flash drives.) Then you would have to reformat it before you could use it with a PC, but Mac usage would be more trouble free.

First thing to do might be to see if Disk utility will read it and what info it might be able to provide, or whether Disk Utility might be able to fix the flash drive -- Disk Utility can be useful for flash drives as well as regular hard drives. Disk Utility is also what you would use to reformat the drive.

Let me know if this helps or if you have more questions.
--------
Beverly Woods
Low End Mac column: http://www.lowendmac.com/woods/index.html

MizSandlot - Jun 24, 2005 - 10:24 am

Beverly,

Can you walk me through the steps of reformatting the Disk to Mac? I'm not a computer person, just a person who uses my computer for word processing, so I don't understand how to reformat the disk.

Thanks,
SJ

DeltaMac - Jun 26, 2005 - 9:21 pm

Put your San Disk in any USB port
Open your Disk Utility ( in your Utilities folder)
Click on the line in the list that shows the SanDisk drive, so that's selected.
Click on the Partition tab
Click on the Volume Scheme and choose 1 Partition from that list, then select the Format on the right side of that window. MacOS Extended is what you want. You can enter a name for the drive if you want. Then click on the Partition button at the bottom right of that window.
Click on Continue when it tells you that you will lose all data on the drive.
And in a few seconds, it will be finished.
Quit Disk Utility
That's it - - If this does not work, or you get some kind of error in the Partition process, the SanDisk is probably bad

- Dale

MizSandlot - Jun 27, 2005 - 10:16 am

Thanks for your help. Will do.

SJ

MizSandlot - Jun 27, 2005 - 10:33 am

I followed the most recent instructions. Now I can't even get the icon on for the Sandisk on my emac.

Thanks to all who tried to help. I'm returning it in GREAT frustration.

SJ