I'm guessing this is futile, but I plugged in my 256MB PNY USB flash drive thismorning and there are no files. None. I had quite a lot on there that I would love to recover. Why has this happened? I really doubt the files have been manually deleted. Is there anything I can do?
USB Flash data loss
- Thread starter Jimshady
- Start date
After looking at the disk in WinHex, I see that there is just some small header data that has in it "FAT16" among other things. Then the disk has a small portion of 00's on it, and is covered almost completely with FF's. I've always had write cache disabled so it's not like I've damaged it by removing it prematurely right?
Pradeep
Storage? I am Storage!
I've used chkdsk with success on a 1GB Microdrive, perhaps it will work with flash RAM too?
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
Try Photorescue. From memory, www.photorescue.com Worked a treat when I lost a flashcard a year or so ago. And you can try it out before you pay.
chkdsk... I'm scared. I'm going to take a disk-dump of my FF's first. They're all I have!
Tea
Storage? I am Storage!
CHKDSK is indeed scary stuff. If it works, well and good. If it doesn't .... you are totally screwed. No data recovery service will want to bother even looking at it after CHKDSK has mangled everything. Photorescue does not touch your data, doesn't alter it in any way, just copies the whole damn drive to a file on your hard drive and sorts it out from there. I recommend it.
I contacted Photorescue. Now I have to decide whether the data is worth more that the service. I can't remember what was on it. I've found a backup of my big program that is only 300 lines lighter than the latest one. Eh. I don't know.