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Old 07-31-2009, 11:29 AM   #1
Kybosh
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Default Major USB drive problem!

Hey guys, I'm going absolutely crazy right now. I just defended my PhD thesis and I'm now doing the revisions to the document. I needed to go back and forth from a PC to my macbook for the past 6 months using a USB drive with no problems.

This time, I went to put the USB drive in the macbook and it froze. So I restarted the computer and now the USB drive when from "Kingston" to "Untitled" and most (not all) of the files changed to these weird unidentified files or disappeared all together.

I have the file backed up in a couple other places but the USB drive had a few keys things I really need.

Help please!
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Old 07-31-2009, 01:01 PM   #2
ken0042
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Have you ran any error checking on the drive? On the Windows PC, right click on My Computer and select "Manage." From there go to drive management, right click Properties, tools, then check for errors.
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Old 07-31-2009, 02:31 PM   #3
Kybosh
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Yep, no errors were found. The USB drive used to have about 3GB worth of information on it but it now only has 100MB worth of information on it. It's like the computer reformatted the drive without my consent. Future shop said it was fubar as well .
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Old 07-31-2009, 03:29 PM   #4
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USB drives and flash memory of that type are not very robust or reliable. Always have a backup. It should only ever be for temporary transportation of files (replaces floppy disks) and not storage of vital data.

A data recovery company may be able to recover data off it as well. Don't believe Futureshop. They know nothing more about computers than your average highschooler.

Last edited by Hack&Lube; 07-31-2009 at 03:33 PM.
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Old 07-31-2009, 03:47 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Hack&Lube View Post
USB drives and flash memory of that type are not very robust or reliable. Always have a backup. It should only ever be for temporary transportation of files (replaces floppy disks) and not storage of vital data.

A data recovery company may be able to recover data off it as well. Don't believe Futureshop. They know nothing more about computers than your average highschooler.
Good advice but just to clarify, I do have everything backed up in many places and the USB drive was only used to transfer between systems. I was more in shock than anything that this could happen haha. It appears that I have everything I need backed up in various other places but the inconvenience set me back a day or so time wise. Oh well.
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Old 07-31-2009, 03:58 PM   #6
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That's good to know, it would be terrible if you lost your entire thesis or something...like all those movies about college students who lose their thesis' down the sewer or something and have to completely re-write them out the night before.
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Old 08-01-2009, 01:03 PM   #7
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Flash memory still retains your data even though it is not being reported by the OS.

Here is the PITA way to recover.

Norton Ghost 2008 or anything else that will do a sector copy of the flash drive in question to another hard disk drive, and use a partition recovery tool to attempt to restore the original partition. (This is useful because if you pooch the data, you can always try copying everything again)

Of course, that's only if you have formated the drive with FAT32/16. No idea for Mac's journaling system, or for some of the other semi-compatible file systems out there.

(I have done the above to recover USB flash drives, and an SD memory card.)

Usually the problem that occurs when you toast your key is that the memory that contains the partition or file information is usually overwritten or written incompletely, either through sudden power surges, your computer turning off mid-write, or just yanking the darn thing out when it's still flashing.
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