The other day an associated handed me the subject thumb drive. He said had been using it for several years and the other day he plugged it into his computer and the computer said: "You need to format the disk in Drive J: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?" Not to say his heart skipped a beat....
He immediately contacted me, and actually cried: least to say... he had mission critical data on the thumb drive that was not backed up on any other device.
Having trouble shoot many computer problems over the last 15 - 20 years, this was my first encounter of this type of problem. After scouring the internet (via Google), I found a couple of hours of reading material describing thumb drive failures. The most current listing, listed three programs, of witch "testdisk" was the most highly recommended. I went to the web site, and read and read, downloaded the software and proceeded to try it.As it stood, I had four options, try three software programs and lastly... send it to a company for software recovery. Due to the sensitive nature of the data, my last option was not looked on favorably.
Before I start: I will run the program on a Window 7, I7 Quad Core computer.
• Inserting the thumb drive, I receive the dialog: "You need to format the disk in Drive J: before you can use it. Do you want to format it?" - I say no.
• I open Admin Tools, disk management: It tells me 3.74 GB RAW, Healthy Primary Partition. Used Space 0, Free Space 0.
• I start TESTDISK
---first screen - create a new log file - ENTER
---second screen - select a media - finds disk/dev/sdb - 4016 MB / 3830 MiB - Jetflash Transcend 4GB - select this and proceed.
---third screen- select partition table type - [Intel] intel/pc partition - hit enter
---fourth screen (it list jetflash drive and CHS 488 255 63 - sector size=512 - I select [Analyse] - hit enter
---fifth screen - Reports "Partition sector doesn't have endmark 0xaa55" - defaults to quick search - hit enter
---sixth screen - report no information options A: add partition, L: load backup or enter to continue - hit enter
---seventh screen - reports no partition found... it highlights >Deeper Search - hit enter
---eighth screen - report no information options A: add partition, L: load backup or enter to continue - hit enter
---nineth screen - reports no partition found... it highlights >[quit] - (return to main menu) - hit enter
At this point, I am open for suggestions
After this not working I tried two other programs, for file recovery:
Asoftech\Data Recovery\adr.exe and iCare Data Recovery Software.exe
While both of these programs recognized the thumb drive, they found no files.
At this point, I am open for suggestions
