Error when booting one of my sticks...

[NLS]

I was trying two of my USB sticks today with unRAID.

 

One booted normally.

 

The other produces this error (but only after it starts the huge lists of tasks while booting):

 

Unpacking initramfs...<0> kernel panic - not syncing invalid compressed format (err=1)

 

Tried twice, one with FAT32 and "syslinux" and one with FAT16 and "syslinux -ma"... no difference.

 

The easy reply would be that the stick is bad, but is it so simple?

 

The stick seems to work fine to hold data and after all... STARTS to boot and loads the two main images (only to stop with the error above).

 

 

[orb]

Got the same kind of problem, it's probably a case of data corruption, you might no see it, but for instance i run md5 on several file while this was happening to me, and I had random result on the bzroot for instance.

Reformating, under OS X and Windows didn't help. what I did to fix it was to run testdisk http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk and fiddle with the partition table and so on.

I finally got it working and it seems to hold fine after that, but I still ordered some new flash as backup.

[NLS]

ok thanks will check it out

 

 

[NLS]

the plot thickens

 

1) same error when I tried on a different computer (this same stick)

 

2) MD5 of the two main images is exactly same with MD5 of the same files on my hard disk!

 

3) how can it be the same error in the exact same position all those times I re-formated and re-copied the unRAID files? (if it was an undetectable hard error - if there is such a thing - at least it wouldn't "hit" at the same files all the time)

 

4) and of course remember that it happens AFTER the two images load and while the boot script starts running (as I already said from the first post) ...if one of the main images had a problem I would expect it wouldn't start at all (and of course not produce the same MD5 and not hit at the same spot)

 

any probable explanation?

 

PS. TestDisk finds error on BOTH my sticks (even the one working that is bought TODAY) - the errors are not filesystem errors or hardware errors but I suspect it expects different bootblock (with less FAT sectors reserved)