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Flash Drive Recovery

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baqai

Member
Joined
Sep 30, 2002
Location
Karachi, Pakistan
All of a sudden my flash drive have gone boinkers, it shows as blank and slightly greyed out, when i try to open it i get the " please insert a disc into H: " i have tried going into disc management and changing the drive letter, different programs like the nift HP USB utility is not able to format the drive, Recuva can't see the drive, What to do?
 
It's likely essentially dead. Your likely only real option is to determine how important the data was and consider paying for a data recovery service (which is very expensive).

I know it doesn't help your situation, but after working in IT for years I've seen too many people using a flash drive as their only storage location for important files. Flash drives don't give any warning when they will die, it just happens, and the data is gone. Flash drives should only be used for transporting data from point A to point B, not holding onto anything permanently.
 
Partition magic might work. Free to download but will only let you recover 1gb with the free version. It's worked pretty well for me, but I can't say I've ever used it on a dead drive
 
If you don't have any important data on the drive then you can try diskpart.
Simply run command prompt ( cmd ) type "diskpart" , next "list disk" , next type "select disk ( and number of the disk )" and at the end type "clean all".
This will clean all drive surface and any damaged info about partitions. Later you will have to create new partition and format it.
This way is working in some cases but usually if drive is not visible by OS then it's simply dead or firmware is damaged and that you can't reflash on your own.
 
it may sound absurd but a reboot of the computer fixed the job atleast half way, recuva can now see the drive, windows also showing the volume but when i try to open it, it shows empty, using recuva i have managed to recover files, data was/is important to my wife, she is a dentist and it was her master's thesis data ...

now coming to technical side, how is it that a reboot the computer managed to fix this? it was a abrupt electricity related reboot not a windows update or any other update related reboot.
 
Never, EVER, keep data that important only on a flash drive.

Dunno how the reboot helped, but consider yourself lucky.
 
it may sound absurd but a reboot of the computer fixed the job atleast half way, recuva can now see the drive, windows also showing the volume but when i try to open it, it shows empty, using recuva i have managed to recover files, data was/is important to my wife, she is a dentist and it was her master's thesis data ...

now coming to technical side, how is it that a reboot the computer managed to fix this? it was a abrupt electricity related reboot not a windows update or any other update related reboot.
If the device is near dying, it can act weird. Get your data off it and make sure she has a proper backup, especially for something that important.
 
As far as the technical side goes, there are utilities that can check the status of hard drives for bad sectors, but I do not know if they are reliable for USB drives and their health. If the drive checks out to be in good status then a reformat is in order.
 
Might want to check the usb port/s individually using a tossable flash first. If a port goes bad it usually kills the drive.
 
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