[gentoo-user] flash drive FAT partition disappears

[Alan E. Davis]

I can't think of a specific place to look for this, so will try the
eclectics at gentoo-user.

A student handed me a USB flash drive with a video file on it he wanted to
offer to me to watch.  It mounted automatically, I copied the file, then I
took the disk out of the drive and gave it to him.  I cannot say with 100%
certainty that I unmounted it.  The file was completely copied.  I am pretty
careful, so I think I unmounted it.

Today he came back to me, asking what happened to his disk.  He said nothing
it there anymore.  I checked.  Gparted says this drive (4 GB I think) has 2
Terabytes of unallocated space.  None of the Windoze gurus (so to speak)
around here know what to do.

Any ideas?   I'm afraid the little bit of progress I've made over the past
13 years in advocating GNU/Linux and Free Softwrae, will be lost if this
problem isn't solved.

Thanks,

Alan