OK, I've found that several data recovery programs have found and
recovered some of the files on my USB drive. The problem is that
they're all "demo" and "trial" versions of programs, and are limited in
how much they will recover. One of them was limited to 64 kilobytes,
which is nothing more than a large text file or a single .JPG image.

Have you tried "Recuva" by Piriform software?

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

They're the same folks that produce Ccleaner. Thankfully I haven't needed
Recuva in some time, but I use CCleaner often. Their "Speccy" program is
also handy. All free (with an option to purchase the Pro version) and fully
working.

Anthony Watson
www.watsondiy.com
www.mountainsoftware.com

Anthony:

No, I haven't tried Recuva because I read the write up on it, and it said it was for recovering DELETED files. In my case, nothing was deleted. I expect the file allocation table on the USB drive was corrupted so that the files are all there, but can't be found because their addresses have been all screwed up.

I have found two programs whose "trial" or "demo" versions allow me to recover up to 1 gigabyte of lost data each. Since this is a 4 GB USB memory drive that's been corrupted, my game plan is to recover 2GB with these demo programs, format the hard drive in my computer, reload Windows, download those same demo programs, and then recover another 2 GB of lost files. That will allow me to recover everything that was on that 4 GB USB drive.

I have two computers and a KVM switch. I use one computer strictly for surfing the internet, and I reformat the hard drive and reload Windows XP whenever I get some malware on that computer. I want to reformat the hard drive and reload Windows XP on that computer because of all of the "free" shareware I've downloaded and installed over the past week or so. Each one of those "free" programs has changed my home page, changed my search engine, and loaded tool bars onto my computer that I don't want or need. I'd reformat my hard drive and re-download only the two demo versions that I know will recover data from my corrupted USB drive.

On Wed, 30 Apr 2014 19:04:45 +0200, nestork
wrote:

No, I haven't tried Recuva because I read the write up on it, and it
said it was for recovering DELETED files. In my case, nothing was
deleted. I expect the file allocation table on the USB drive was
corrupted so that the files are all there, but can't be found because
their addresses have been all screwed up.

Did you read this part?

"Recovery from damaged or formatted disks

The dreaded hard drive crash. The file you forgot to backup before you
reformatted a drive. The camera memory card with your holiday snaps
that no longer works. Recuva can handle them too.

Windows (and other operating systems) uses a hidden index on hard
drives, USB drives, and memory cards. Instead of having to search
through the entire drive for a file you request, all it has to do is
look it up in the index -- a much faster process.

Unfortunately, if the index is damaged, Windows can no longer find
your files, even if the files themselves haven't been corrupted.
That's where Recuva comes in.

Unlike Windows, Recuva scans all parts of a drive, looking for the
bits that make up your files. If a drive's index has been damaged,
chances are other parts of the drive may have been damaged too. Recuva
will show you a list of files it has found on the drive, and give you
an estimate of the likelihood of success of recovering them.

Similarly, when you format a drive (especially if you use the Quick
Format option), Windows erases the hidden index but does not overwrite
the existing files until you start saving new data to it. Recuva can
still scan the drive's contents to find your files."

http://www.piriform.com/recuva/features/recovery-from-damaged-or-formatted-disks

On Wed, 30 Apr 2014 19:04:45 +0200, nestork
wrote:


No, I haven't tried Recuva

Nestor,

Have a look:

TestDisk is OpenSource software and is licensed under the terms of the
GNU General Public License (GPL v2+).

TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily
designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks
bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty softwa
certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting
a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really
easy.

TestDisk can
Fix partition table, recover deleted partition
Recover FAT32 boot sector from its backup
Rebuild FAT12/FAT16/FAT32 boot sector
Fix FAT tables
Rebuild NTFS boot sector
Recover NTFS boot sector from its backup
Fix MFT using MFT mirror
Locate ext2/ext3/ext4 Backup SuperBlock
Undelete files from FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext2 filesystem
Copy files from deleted FAT, exFAT, NTFS and ext2/ext3/ext4
partitions.

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

Here is the Forum

http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/

Well, I tried both Recuva and TestDisk and didn't get any further.
With Recuva all I got was the following message when I tried to scan my USB memory stick:

"Failed to scan the following drives:
D: Invalid drive size"

And, I really don't know what that means.

With TestDisk came two programs; one called TestDisk_Win.exe and another called PhotoRec_Win.exe. Both seem to be DOS based programs because the user interface isn't graphical, but text based. And, I didn't get anywhere with either one of these programs.

I'm going to reformat my hard drive and proceed with Plan A to get the remaining two Gigabytes of data off that memory stick. I should be back online in a day or two.

Well, I tried both Recuva and TestDisk and didn't get any further.
I'm going to reformat my hard drive and proceed with Plan A

I didn't see your original post, so I don't know your exact situation, but
I've learned from experience to never rely on a single copy of data.
Backup, backup, and backup again. With a redundant copy of your data, you
don't need to worry about recovering from corrupted or damaged drives. With
a second backup, you can still recover your files even if your main backup
is unreadable too.

I've been there myself and learned the hard way.

Good luck!

Anthony Watson
www.watsondiy.com
www.mountainsoftware.com

I recovered the rest of the files on my USB memory stick and I'm back online now.

On Thu, 1 May 2014 01:04:49 +0200, nestork
wrote:


I recovered the rest of the files on my USB memory stick and I'm back
online now.

Curious minds and all - details, details, details

I recovered the rest of the files on my USB memory stick and I'm back
online now.

Excellent! What did you end up using to recover your files?

Anthony Watson
www.watsondiy.com
www.mountainsoftware.com

Oren:

They were mostly family pictures. My dad went on a trip to Ukraine with my oldest sister to see the town he grew up in. That was about 7 years ago, and he's passed away since. My sister has the actual photographs in a photo album, but I scanned them on my multifunction printer and kept those digital versions on that USB drive. That's because years ago my dad wanted to send reprints of those pictures to his brothers and sisters in Toronto, Montreal and Philadelphia, but I was able to e-mail them without incurring any costs. Also, there were some business related files on that drive as well. So, it was nothing of interest to anyone but me and my family.

Anthony:
I used "7-Data Recovery Suite" and "MiniTool Power Data Recovery". The "Demo" version of each program worked equally well in recovering data off the USB drive, but each one would only recover 1 GB before it would tell me to buy the full blown version. Since this was a 4GB USB memory drive, I downloaded 1 GB with each demo version, then reformatted my hard drive, reloaded those same two programs using their installation programs and recovered the remaining two GBytes. I actually found the 7-Data product to be much easier to use, and I'm watching on the "Giveaway of the Day" web site to see if I can get it free.

I used "7-Data Recovery Suite" and "MiniTool Power Data Recovery".

Thanks for the info. I backup nightly and keep multiple backups, so I'm
hoping I never need these kind of tools. But, I will add both products to
my reference list for the future, in case the free Recuva doesn't work for
me.

Since this was a 4GB USB memory drive, I downloaded 1 GB with each
demo version, then reformatted my hard drive, reloaded those same
two programs using their installation programs and recovered the
remaining two GBytes.

Tricky. Since your drive was removable, I suppose you could have installed
the software on different computers to achieve the same task.

I'm glad you were able to recover your photo data.

Take care,

Anthony Watson
www.mountainsoftware.com
www.watsondiy.com

"Mayayana" wrote in news:lj1nd7$94e$1@dont-
email.me:


| I have one stick that's not seen at all in one particular
| Win7 laptop. I have no idea why. I don't trust them with
| anything other than moving files from one place to another.
|
| Just wondering here... Is that USB stick encrypted?

No. It's a Sandisk "Cruzer". I have two. One has a
white slide and the other has red. That's the only
difference I know of. The Win7 laptop sees all sticks
but the red Cruzer. All other machines I've used the
red Cruzer in see it fine. I tried to rule out different
variables (OS, specific USB plug, etc) but never found
an explanation.



Win7. I have a couple of Sandisk's. Use to work all the time. Suddenly
symptoms you describe showed up. SOMETIMES they work but more not than so.
Always work fine on other systems. Wondered if that secure sandisk software
messed things up. Tried various things I found Googling. Finally said the
heck with it. Things are dirt cheap. Not worth the time. Just use anything
but Sandisk. No problems.