That, basically – when I switch it on, I hear the ‘USB connection’ chime, and it shows up as ‘USB Mass Storage Device’ under hardware and the ‘remove hardware safely’ (or whatever it’s called in English) quick launch icon (them things to the right of the taskbar).
I just can’t access it – seems Windows can’t access the volume information (there used to be two sub entries beneath ‘USB Mass Storage Device’ – one being some rather cryptic alphanumeric string, and one simply called ‘standard volume’ (translated) – the latter’s now gone, and if I click properties -> volume -> refresh on the first entry, it does nothing for a little while, and then comes up with an error about not being able to retrieve volume information). It doesn’t show up under My Computer at all.
I’ve tried the (to me) obvious stuff, different USB ports, reboot, switching on and off, but other than that, I’m coming up empty at the moment. Any and all suggestions are welcome.
My OS is WinXP Home Edition SP2.
Somewhat a shot in the dark, but try going through control panel, administrative tools, computer management, and picking the ‘disk management’ entry on the left-side treeview.
If the USB drive is showing up for the volume manager service at all, then it’ll appear here as a ‘removable.’ Based on what it shows, you may be able to assign a drive letter if that’s all that’s wrong, or repair the volume format, and a few other things perhaps. Worth taking a try, and reporting back exactly what, if anything, happens. Might help us narrow things down.
Also try plugging the drive into a different USB port on the PC. This will make XP “rediscover” the drive, and maybe you’ll be able to see it again.
It wasn’t me!
What?
Thanks, that brought forth some success – it does show up now, albeit as empty, and apparently inaccessible. I didn’t do more than look for it under ‘disk management’, then an autoplay-searchbox popped up for a few seconds, then disappeared again.
On second try, under ‘disk management’, it shows me an entry with the correct size for the drive under its old drive letter, but the information on the file system is missing, and it’s shown as empty, even though claimed to be error-free.
Attempting to access the drive makes the system go wonky for a bit (the window apparently freezes up, although the rest is only marginally affected), then does nothing. Closing that window apparently forces the Explorer to reinitialize (task bar and icons vanish for a moment).
Now I’m getting a ‘drive not formatted’ error when I attempt to access it… I think I need to go to bed and look at this tomorrow.
Save yourself some time and simply plug it it another PC. If it reads OK it’s a PC drive allocation issue, if not then the thumbdrive is damaged or has a corrupted FAT.
You might want to boot to some other OS than Windows, and then have a look.
I’m pretty sure it’s a drive issue by now – I’m currently running TestDisk to try and figure out what’s wrong, seems like the partition can’t be read (the first test told me exactly that, the second, in-depth test I’m running now looks like it’ll take a few months to complete – it’s currently on cylinder 128 of 30400, and shows read errors on every other one, or at least that’s what I make of its output). It’s an external hard drive by the way, so as an absolute last resort option I can still try to get it out of the case and install it into the computer directly, if it’s an issue with the USB controller.
Could be worse–it could be your sex drive.
Yeah, that was on it, too…
No luck trying to recover the partition. Does anybody know of a good (preferably cheap, ideally free) file recovery tool? I’ve had a similar issue with a thumbdrive whose partition I’d accidentally nuked (I had it plugged in while re-installing Windows, didn’t recognize it for what it was and told the installer to kill the partition – yeah, not my smartest moment), but some piece of software was able to recover nearly everything that had been on it, but I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called…
I’ll kick this up one last time, as I’ve not yet had any luck in recovering anything from the damn drive. Any thoughts anybody?
Was the drive dropped or anything like that? Damage to the USB connector can cause problems where the computer can detect the device, but can’t communicate with the device correctly.
Thanks, but it turned out to be a drive problem – I’ve installed the disk into my computer, but all it does is make weird clanking noises. It remains just as inaccessible as before, I can’t even detect it in the bios, and though windows claims cheerfully to have detected a new hard drive on startup, its data remains lost.
I think I’ve done all I could to save it. Time to face the reality – it’s dead. It’s not pinin’ for the fjords. 
This’d be a good time to try the 'freezer trick '.
There’ve been stories for years that letting a dead drive cool overnight in a freezer will sometimes allow data recovery.
You’ve nothing to lose.
Heh. I’ve never heard of that, but at this point, if someone told me sprinkling it with mistletoe on a crossroads at midnight when the moon is full might help, I’d probably give it a go… So I’ll report back.
It’s not like you got anything to lose. There are data recovery services out there, but are they ever expensive. As in a company’s We Need This Data or Shut Our Doors category.
Yeah, that’s why that pretty much never was an option. Even if I had the money, the data on the drive isn’t sensible enough to warrant this kind of expense… Just some old writings that’ll be gone forever, and while the world’s certainly poorer for losing my sonnet cycle about a closing down freak show, I doubt it’ll ever notice.
Not free, but not a fortune either, SpinRite, but it does sound like it’s too late for it :(.
CMC +fnord!
Yeah, data recovery services are expensive, but you can cut the cost somewhat. If you’re willing to wait, you’ll get a price break; most people expect a 24 or 48 hour turnaround, and that’s what’s really costly. But if you can wait a week or more, it’s much more reasonable. And prices will also vary depending on how you want your data returned to you. Some services may let you supply a new hard drive to put the recovered data on, which can save you some cash if it’s a lot of data, instead of buying media from the recovery service. One outfit I’ve used in the distant past, DriveSavers, apparently now offers online recovery, so you can download the data you want as soon as they recover it. No idea what the cost is on that.
I can tell you that, about ten years ago, a one-day turnaround on a hard drive cost about $2,000. If you were willing to wait and supplied your own media, it was more like $500-800. Go ahead and call someone and find out what they’re charging these days, can’t hurt to get some information, eh?