Any suggestions for accessing a malfunctioning flash drive?

Factual Questions
1

I have a 1GB flash drive with some important documents on it and I have foolishly not backed them up. The drive has always worked flawlessly. Now, when I plug it into a computer, the balloon comes up that says that a USB device has malfunctioned and Windows cannot recognize the device. The drive then does not show up in ‘My Computer’ or anywhere else. I have tried to run it on computers running XP Home, XP Pro, and Vista Home Premium.

Any suggestions on how I can get at my files?
Any ideas on what might have caused this? I am not always good at stopping devices before disconnecting them. Could this have messed things up?

Thanks in advance for your help and attention.

2

There’s all kinds of data recover software that will attempt to access a borked flash drive. I don’t think any of it is free, though.

3

Test Disk is an effective free data retriever, but you have to get your drive recognised first. I’ll keep an eye on this thread, as I have a similar problem, difference being, mine is a usb drive.

4

This can corrupt data if you yank it out before its done transferring (which happens more than you might think) but I don’t see how it could corrupt the drive itself.

Even if its one of those with its own mini-OS on it Windows would still recognize it.

5

A few years ago I had this happen and used an old Norton Disk Doctor to fix it.

6

card recovery is the most powerful and effective tool and is easy to use but it’s not free.

I’ve used it and it works very well. There is a test drive version that will let you see if your files are recoverable (ie visible to the software) before purchasing.

7

I’ve got a 2 Gig flash drive (USB) that “borked” (I love that word, thanks beowuff). I just tossed it in a drawer and bought a 4 Gig that works well.

8

And that recovered the vital files off the old one how? At the risk of mini-Modding, in GQ it’s customary to try to answer the question the OP asked.

9

I tried Card Recovery, but it only works if the flash drive can be recognized as a drive letter. Windows (any version) just reports that the USB device has malfunctioned. It doesn’t show as a drive letter in My Computer. Besides, Card Recovery only recovers media files. I need to recover my band inventory – an xls file.

And I didn’t back it up anywhere. :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:

10

getdataback for FAT.

Saved many flashdrives, and recovered much data with that program.