Will the Prusa printer ruin the pendrive - usb drive?
Hello,
I own a Prusa XL multi-head printer.
I recently encountered a problem that has been around for several years, according to which the printer can stop due to a USB problem during longer printing sessions. Unfortunately, I experienced this during a 48-hour print session and the printer did nothing for 8 hours before I discovered that the printer was stopped. This brought the total printing time to 56 hours.
I guess it is understandable that during such a long print session, one cannot be constantly next to the printer and monitor it.
I was disappointed that Prusa took so long to fix the error. After that, I updated to firmware 6.2.2. Before that, the printer had 6.1.3.
I have not had such a long print session since then, so I could not test the phenomenon.
However, one time when I wanted to print, the file did not transfer to the printer via PrusaConnect. I tried via PrusaLink, but I got an error. Then I plugged the (original Prusa) pendrive into the computer and was sorry to see that the entire file structure was ruined. The names had characters that we don't use. The files and directories became unreadable. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of it.
I quickly grabbed another USB drive and copied the file to be printed onto it. This makes the printer work.
I quick-formatted the original Prusa drive and copied the new 6.2.4 firmware and the file to be printed onto it. The printer detected the pendrive, but it didn't see anything on it.
So I copied the new firmware to the pendrive I was using before and the update was successful.
There is a usage indicator LED on this pendrive. Normally, when writing or reading is taking place, it lights up and flashes. If there is no operation, it remains dark. This works perfectly fine on a computer. However, in the case of my printer, I noticed something very worrying. This LED flashes continuously when plugged into the printer. Even when there is no operation. I would understand it when printing, since it needs to record the printing status somewhere so that it can continue where it stopped in the event of a power outage. Both with firmware 6.2.2 and 6.2.4.
But when printing is not working and the printer is really not doing anything, why does it keep poking the drive?
Could this have ruined the original Prusa pendrive as well?
I haven't dealt with the Prusa pendrive since then. Maybe a full format will help it. Maybe an integrity check wouldn't hurt either.
I was afraid for my pendrives. And I'm worried that Prusa doesn't fix such errors or only very slowly.