cgsecurity.org

Greetings all. My wife's USB thumb drive has failed and my wife will loose a year's worth of teaching materials if we can't recover the drive. It was removed without using the safe removal step and Windows 7 now says the disc needs to be formatted.

The attached image shows the results from TestDisk Analyze but unfortunately I'm unclear about what to do next and want to avoid doing something destructive out of ignorance. Kindly share any thoughts or guidance you have. I should be able to work on it in real time with the discussion.

Thanks in advance!

Case

Please use TestDisk 6.14-32bit.
It looks like, that the size of your thumb drive is only 4 MB.
How is your thumb drive listed in your windows disk management console?

Hello Fiona and thank you. I switched to version 6.14 and got the same results from the Analyze process (having selected Intel as the partition type). The thumb is a 4GB unit and the attached image shows everything from the Windows 7 interactions so far. Disk Manager labeled it as a 4MB RAW drive (see image).

I had read somewhere that doing a Quick Format could be a possible fix but I'm not ready to risk that until I've exhausted all the recovery tricks. Any ideas?

Case

Here there all, I desperately need resolution on this so guidance or input from the community would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

The problem is that your thumb is not well detected. It's probabely a hardware failure, and if the "computer says to testdisk" that the thumb size is 4MB, testdisk will scan 4MB. You'll have to find tools to deal with controler failure, if it's not a flash problem. Be carefull with these tools, it's easier to kill that to repair with it. Else, you may find a pro near you. I mean a pro involved in datarecovery, not someone selling computers.

Thank you very much Remy, I think I understand enough of what you explained such that I'll be able to at least explore that path.

And to all, ANY kind of guidance or ideas continue to be welcomed.

Case

Good beginnig to explore is flashboot.ru, but please, be carefull.

4 MB recognized from 32 GB is far too little.
I assume that the controller from your thumb drive is defect.
So it's rather a case for a professional.
Even if I'd make an effort to be tricki and edit the amount of cylinder to get your drive listed, might be result in a damaged file system.
Changing the amount of you cylinder meght be similar like in this thread;
http://forum.cgsecurity.org/phpBB3/post1121.html#p1098
But I assume that 4 MB is too little?