Windows 10 and removable media.

It has come to my attention that there was a bug in Windows 10 a couple of years ago that could cause some very big problems. The bug was patched by Microsoft so provided the computer is up to date this should not be a problem. But there are other things that can cause a card to become corrupted or un-readable before you have had a chance to make a copy of your files.

With the problem release of Windows 10, when you connected removable media to the computer that contained audio files the computer would attempt to encrypt the card. When you try to browse to the files instead of being able to open the files they will show up as files with a size of 0 Bytes and you won’t be able to do anything with them on any computer. But, as I said this issue was fixed some time ago. So provided the computer has been kept up to date this should no longer be an issue. So make sure your computer is up to date!

But it is also worth noting that Windows 10 includes an encryption app called BitLocker. If this is a accidentally used on any of your removable media it will make that media impossible to read on any other device and the files will appear to be 0 Bytes long until the media is unlocked.

In addition there have been problems with the drivers for some card readers that have led to the corruption of SD cards. So make sure your drivers are up to date and do some test transfers before plugging in a card with anything important on it.

Use the write protect tab on SxS and SD cards.

If you are using SxS cards or SD cards, the cards have a write protect tab. If you lock the card before connecting it to the computer it will prevent the computer from writing to the card and this will protect your media from corruption. You should always do this if you can and then verify your copies, preferably including clip playback as one of your copy checks. Ideally you should use dedicated backup software such as Hedge or Shot Put Pro to do verified copies and transfers. Sony’s Catalyst Prepare can also copy clips with checksum verification.

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