On 18/01/2019 19.27, arlen holder wrote:
On Fri, 18 Jan 2019 03:13:05 -0500, Paul wrote:

It's when file system operations are outstanding, and you
pull the plug, that corruption of the last operations can
occur.

Hi Paul,
Thanks for that information - which - will help everyone who cares.
I don't doubt anything you say - as - I have been burned empirically.

It's actually embarrassing to admit, but - in the past - about in the days
of 100GB and 500GB USB drives being "all the rage", I've "corrupted" entire
USB drives more than once - where - while I don't doubt what you say - it
isn't always that simple.

It "might" be that simple - but - I was "sure" I waited for file transfers
to end, and _still_, entire USB drives lost their minds on me.

I only damaged one. Then I was more careful. :-p


When I "recovered" the data, it was flat (i.e., no folder hierarchy) and
all the files lost their first letter, where, for example, if the file name
was "foo.txt", it turned into "oo.txt" (as I recall) or maybe "Xoo.txt" (I
don't remember - I just remember the first character was gone).

FAT marks deleted files by replacing the first character of the name
with a certain character, that is otherwise forbidden on file names. I
don't remember which - google says it is 0xE5. Part of the procedure
when undeleting was to guess what the first char on the name of the
files would be. Then somebody invented software that would make a backup.

--
Cheers, Carlos.