have you guys any idea to whats happening to my 8 gb memory stick, every time i put approx 2-3 gb of data on, mp3s for instance, when i remove the stick then reinsert half the data is missing, but the memory is still showing the amount i origanally put on i have tried formatting, but to no avail, i thought maybe a dodgy stick so i swapped it and the problem is still there.
Any advice please.

I encountered a problem similar to this that turned out to be the stick's inability to handle extensively long filenames in a large quantity. Apparently some of these sticks have a rather small FAT table (the stick's Table of Contents) allocated to them. I renamed all my songs to shorter names, and then had no problem getting them all on and accessible.

Example.....

Kentucky Headhunters - Flying Under the Radar - 05 - Take These Chains from My Heart.mp3

to

KY Head - 05.mp3

This can be quite an undertaking unless you use a mass file renamer. Since players that display the artist and title normally use the ID3 tag instead of the actual filename, this won't affect the displaying of the titles. You could just rename the files to a number, and in that way set the order of play for the entire collection.

What I usually do is reformat a new memory stick with NTFS and that solves the problem. Plus it is a far more efficient file system, faster, and will store more data than with FAT32.

Sounds like a good idea, but if you are using an MP3 player/converter like I do, make sure it will read NTFS (mine won't). I see some of the radios in the newer vehicles are incorporating a USB port now. I like that!

sounds like a good idea but the only option i have when formating is FAT32 and does not give the NTFS option.

Try to format it via the "Computer Management” snap in, you can find it by going to Control Panel, Administrative Tools, Computer Management, and then Disk Management; or you can use the convert command:

CONVERT volume /FS:NTFS

volume: Specifies the drive letter (followed by a colon), mount point, or volume name.