Once the files have "disappeared" on the Win98 system ... if you move the stick back to the Win10 system, do they appear there?

If yes, probably file system difference between Win98 and 10.

If no, if you remove the stick from Win10, NOT put it in Win98, reboot Win10 (insure caches cleared)
and put it back in Win10 - are the files still there?

If yes, Win98 is corrupting the stick. If no, Win10 is not correctly writing the stick.

If you format the stick in Win98 - does it work in Win98?

Can you see the files written from Win98 in Win10?
Does it still work in Win98 after Win10 accesses it?

I ran into a stick the other day that XP didn't like if I formatted it in 11. Formatted it in XP and it worked fine in both.

What capacity is the USB stick?

What USB storage drivers are you using in 98? Specific name and version please.

The USB drive could have multiple partitions, or perhaps is formatted as NTFS or exFAT, neither of which Win98SE can read.

Thanks guys/gals

Well, I formatted (long version format) two 2GB unbranded USB sticks in the Win10 system, copied the two previous files that were vanishing in Win98, and they are both there, bright as day! But this is not the end story. The USB drives were installed on my other Win98 system that I am still configuring, so it is still a partial mystery at the moment. I recently had a graphic cards take a dive, so for now the other system is without a card, so J am unable to test at the moment. I'm sure you all understand not tampering with components while proofing a new setup. (haha) That's one thing I learned a long time ago! I'm very curious to find out why this one worked and the other one didn't ... One thought is I previously only formatted the USB drives with the 'fast' option? Any thoughts on that, I really don't know the format differences between the fast and slow format options?

9x really hates when you don't safely remove usb drives.

It's probably that.

3.x had the same issue with floppies

Please format the USB stick with the oldest operating system version you are using (W98), then use this formatting to transfer the files.

Kittyboy wrote on 2025-05-10, 10:09:

Thanks guys/gals

Well, I formatted (long version format) two 2GB unbranded USB sticks in the Win10 system, copied the two previous files that were vanishing in Win98, and they are both there, bright as day! But this is not the end story. The USB drives were installed on my other Win98 system that I am still configuring, so it is still a partial mystery at the moment. I recently had a graphic cards take a dive, so for now the other system is without a card, so J am unable to test at the moment. I'm sure you all understand not tampering with components while proofing a new setup. (haha) That's one thing I learned a long time ago! I'm very curious to find out why this one worked and the other one didn't ... One thought is I previously only formatted the USB drives with the 'fast' option? Any thoughts on that, I really don't know the format differences between the fast and slow format options?

There are a bunch of possible reasons if you really want to dive into the bits and bytes

• the drive could have been formatted with something other than FAT16
• I have encountered USB drives before that have not been partitioned, rather, the entire drive is formatted as a FAT16 file system, like a floppy disk or Zip disk
• the partition may not have been cylinder-aligned as DOS expects
• the partition may have been valid FAT16, but had a type code set other than what DOS expects (such as 0e Win95 FAT16 LBA)

and so on.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-05-13, 00:41:

There are a bunch of possible reasons if you really want to dive into the bits and bytes […]
Show full quote

Kittyboy wrote on 2025-05-10, 10:09:

Thanks guys/gals

Well, I formatted (long version format) two 2GB unbranded USB sticks in the Win10 system, copied the two previous files that were vanishing in Win98, and they are both there, bright as day! But this is not the end story. The USB drives were installed on my other Win98 system that I am still configuring, so it is still a partial mystery at the moment. I recently had a graphic cards take a dive, so for now the other system is without a card, so J am unable to test at the moment. I'm sure you all understand not tampering with components while proofing a new setup. (haha) That's one thing I learned a long time ago! I'm very curious to find out why this one worked and the other one didn't ... One thought is I previously only formatted the USB drives with the 'fast' option? Any thoughts on that, I really don't know the format differences between the fast and slow format options?

There are a bunch of possible reasons if you really want to dive into the bits and bytes

• the drive could have been formatted with something other than FAT16
• I have encountered USB drives before that have not been partitioned, rather, the entire drive is formatted as a FAT16 file system, like a floppy disk or Zip disk
• the partition may not have been cylinder-aligned as DOS expects
• the partition may have been valid FAT16, but had a type code set other than what DOS expects (such as 0e Win95 FAT16 LBA)

and so on.

I will study these topics, very interesting. I definitely what to learn and be more aware when troubleshooting.

jakethompson1 wrote on 2025-05-10, 02:38:

The USB drive could have multiple partitions, or perhaps is formatted as NTFS or exFAT, neither of which Win98SE can read.

I think Win98 doesn't expect to find a partition table on a USB drive. I had a USB stick with one partition formatted as FAT32 and it didn't work in 98. I had to reformat the stick in Windows 98 and now it doesn't have any partition table at all.