Resolved Recovering data from failed USB thumb drive - any hope?

The drive in question was bumped. Now, when inserted, it shows as a drive, but not a logical drive. Using Disk Manager shows it as a removable drive, "no media ", the same as my empty DVD drive.

It's not that the drive was accidentally erased, formatted, etc; it apparently suffered a hardware issue.

There are some key data files on this drive I'd really like to recover if at all possible.

So... is there any hope? What tools can I try? Free, of course, at first, but if all else fails I'd pay for a recovery tool as long as it can preview the files first to ensure I could recover them.

 

Thanks, but Recuva was completely useless. It just said it could not read from the drive.

 

Yes. This originally happened on my laptop, so I tried it in a different port, first, fearing perhaps the USB port was damaged, but no luck. So I tried it in a desktop (which is only USB 2.0, for what that's worth), and still the same result. Nada.

The drive is being viewed very much as a removable drive with no media in it.

The only piece of software I tried which gave me any info at all was one called "CardRecovery ", which at least saw the USB drive letter and gave me a small piece of info; namely that it reported size as 33 MB! Strange, considering this is a 16GB drive. I expanded the number of sectors to search and it did not show any JPG files (which is was default to search for). There were a few JPGs on the drive in various folders so they should have appeared had the drive been readable.

Also for what it's worth, the drive is recognize as a "USB MEMORY BAR USB Device ". That's not how it was recognized, before.

I know it's not a good idea to have files only on a flash drive, but it was in a transitional state and just hadn't gotten to backing the files up yet. Bad timing. I'm not in a huge hurry for the files on this drive, but it's important to recover them if at all possible.

EDIT - it's a PNY 16GB flash drive. I could get the model # if it matters at all.

 

Model # would help. How hard was the drive bumped?

 

I'm pretty sure the model # is:
PNY Compact Attaché 16GB USB 2.0 Flash Drive - P-FD16GCOM-GE

As for bump; not sure. My young cat jumped on the laptop on the couch and, in turn, on the laptop, which send it on to the floor (not far). The thumb drive looked on a slight angle but that could happen from a minor shove. The laptop is fine and the USB port isn't loose or anything, and I see no physical damage to the drive, so the drive itself could have had anything ranging from a small tap, to the laptop (not heavy) falling on it thumb-drive-first.

It's uncertain whether the problem was from a power or static discharge, or whether some contacts in the drive itself got damaged. Given that a cat jumped on the laptop, static could have played a role.

 

It may have been bumped in a way that may have rendered the drive inaccessible. I take it that it does not work on any computer.

 

You could try the PNY recovery Tool just click on Download PNY Data Recovery Software. Click HERE

 

That's most likely the case. Not so hard... but it was just the wrong way to either physically damage it or fry it through improper electricity (whatever the sort).

The question is whether there is some way to directly access any remaining data, or whether the chip itself (or controller) are hopelessly damaged.

Correct. I've only tried 2 computers, but several different ports, one is W7, one is XP, and the behavior is now consistent. It's not as though it's intermittent or trying to access. It simply gives the "no media" result each time.


I'll try the PNY program later tonight and report the results.

 

OK... I tried the PNY program. It was useless. Didn't even show the drive.

I need something which more directly accesses the raw data of the drive in a way Windows normally would not allow. Somewhat like the old Norton DOS days.

I'd be happy, at this point, to at least know if there is any data left on the drive and accessible by some method. I could then wait to find a tool which could recover the files themselves.

 

Kroll Ontrack > Flash Drive Recoverey

 

Any idea how much these guys would charge for a 16gb flash drive, IF they could even read some of the files?

It's worth some money, but not hundreds and hundreds of dollars. I'm curious what the range is.

 

Did you try calling the "Free Quote & Consultation" number listed prominently at the top of that page?

 

Thanks. Good idea. That's what I want to do; view the contents (if any) on a much more fundamental level than Windows usually allows.

I don't mind paying some money but I've heard some of these services get prohibitively expensive. Good for companies who have a catastrophic failure of valuable data which is worth major bucks but not so good for individuals.

Good thoughts, but I looked. Nothing. Since I hadn't edited most of the files in a while, it was a long shot anything would have been around, still.

 

Not yet. I was thinking I would when business hours time was available, but it's always good to get ideas from other parties not involved in trying to sell a service. I'm just wondering if these things are ever done for a price even worth considering.

 

For hard drives, I've seen invoices as low as $129 and as high as $16K.

 

Heh. $16K. I presume there was a lot of manual file reconstruction for large files on that one. That's more than just the "recovery" alone. Unless they had to create a custom hard drive controller of some sort.

You'd think anyone who would pay a $16K bill would have, in place, a substantial system of backups / redundancy. Either that or they had a really, REALLY bad day.