USB Flash Drive / Stick - Tech Help Pls

[wiseguy]

I purchased two Kingston 4gb Datatraveler flash sticks a couple of weeks ago so that I could download video clips and convert the .rar files into .avi files in order to play them on either a laptop or desktop. They both worked perfectly well for two weeks but although one is still functioning, the other is behaving strangely.

When I try to delete any of the files on the USB flash drive they reappear. This is what I do:

(1)
Click onto the 'My Computer' shortcut on the computer, and then click on the 'USB flash drive' icon in order to see the files. I then 'right click' on the files and select 'delete' as normal and confirm that I want to delete the selected file/files by clicking 'OK', and the files disappear from the page.
(2)
I then exit the flash drive back to 'My Computer' and right click over the USB flash drive icon to access the 'properties' pie chart which shows that the supposed deleted and therefore empty flash drive is still showing that 1.2GB of memory space is still being used up on the flash stick.
(3)
I therefore click back on the flash drive again and see that what was previously an empty page before i exited, now contains all the files I had just deleted but this time they are all showing as '0KB' of memory ie. seemingly empty files that have for some strange reason reappeared.

I don't know why the files that I delete keep reappearing next time I click on the flash drive or why despite them all showing as containing 0KB of memory they still are using up 1.2GB of stored memory in the USB flash drive properties chart.

Have any of you guys come across a similar issue and more importantly do any of you fine people more technically minded than myself know how to empty the folder of its files and memory that they are using up permanently so that it can be used a again?

I appreciate any and all help that you can give in resolving this issue, many thanks guys.

[Sam Slater]

When you delete something on your PC it's not really deleted but merely labelled by the OS as something which can safely be copied over.

It might be the way the usb drives were formatted (you don't say what OS you're using). Try reformatting the usb drives by right-clicking the drive and choosing 'Format'. Fat32 with 4096 allocation unit size should be default and fine.

Ps. You don't 'convert' .rar files to .avi files. Rar files are just container files like .zips. Think of them as folders that compress the files inside.

[wiseguy]

Thanks for that Sam, I reformatted the USB flash drive using the settings that you suggested and it appears to have done the trick, the erroneous 'ghost' files have disappeared and the properties show that I have the maximum amount of memory available to use again.