Fumble-fingered Microsoft

Coincidence?

I just posted this morning about big companies behaving like Microsoft, fumbling the technologies and blaming on the competition.

I have a USB flash drive which I use to transfer files at work. Over the last few days, I have used it to transfer files between a MSWindows7 notebook machine on my desk and an MSWindows7  narrow tower machine up in the computer lab. I always get nervous about moving data on USB drives like this. Microsoft's software has bitten me in the past. So I back it up periodically.

But it had been a while since the last time. Have I backed it up this week?

So it was a little bit of an unpleasant surprise to plug it in to the notebook on my desk and see the warning dialog:

"Some problems have been detected in several files on this media."
"Do you want to fix them?"

There is no right answer to that dialog box.

Hit "Yes" and it messes up your file system.

Hit "No" and it messes up your file system a different way.

Close the accursed dialog without answering and it messes with your file system for spite.

Rip the USB out without mounting, or try to leave the dialog unanswered while you try to properly unmount the USB, and it leaves the file system and/or partition structures in a half-altered state.

It shouldn't be writing anything to those structures at that point in the first place. You don't have to write to those structures if you are only reading files on the disk.

Yes, Microsoft screwed up their various definitions of FAT file systems and the associated partitioning standards.

And they patented their screw-ups and charge people who produce non-MSWindows OSses patent-use fees for not using their patented standards screw-ups.

And if you refuse to pay because you don't want to use their intellect-impaired "Intellectual Property" anyway, they take you to court and force you to provide all sorts of proof that you and you grandparents and your in-laws have never used those patents, are not using them, and never-ever-ever will, as long as everyone lives.

Until you just give up, sign on the dotted line, and commit yourself to refrain from doing anything that would ever harm Microsoft's position in the market-place, etc.

(No, I'm not exaggerating, and I'm only speaking metaphorically about the in-laws and grandparents. Think technology relationships. That is what Microsoft's "right to innovate" is all about.)

But that doesn't mean they have any reason to write to your partition map just to mount and read the media.

So, I have to capture the data on this drive when I go home tonight, and reconcile it with my backups. Then re-format and figure out what I need to carry with me. The fewer files I carry, the safer it is.

And, incidentally, a pox on Intel, too, for helping bad players in the industry impose these poorly designed, fragile USB media on us. A pox on Microsoft and Intel both.