I have a 4GB Usb Drive. I don’t know what I was thinking but I pulled it from the USB hub while it was still flashing. Now any PC I put it in sees the drive but as RAW and 0 bytes.
I downloaded O&P recovery and had it scan my drive but it has not found anything yet.
I really need the data back as all my passwords were on it.
When you delete a file from a drive you don’t actually delete the file and its contents. You are merely changing the bit in the file table so the operating system thinks space is now available. Unless the data is overwritten by other data, changing that bit back with appropriate software often recovers the file. But not always.
When you removed your USB drive while it was blinking, the computer was still writing data to the file. At best your premature removal damaged the file table to the point the computer thinks the drive is empty. Using appropriate software to read the drive might allow you to recover some of your data. That’s because the data that was being written to the drive at the moment you pulled the drive may or may not be there, and if it is, it might be corrupted beyond repair.
I never heard of “O&P recovery” (got a URL?) so I cannot vouch for its credibility. However, assuming the software to be a legitimate recovery tool, and having found none, you may be SOL.
In the future, waiting until the blinking stops is always a good idea. (You will probably hear from others who did what you did and suffered no harm. Anecdotes are meaningless since others did not do “exactly” the same thing you did at the “exact” time of data writing. In other words it’s a fish and bicycle comparison.) Also, you can minimize a similar occurrence by never “moving” a file (on a Windows machine). Instead, always, always, always copy and paste files. Once you have confirmed the copy and paste method has succeeded (you have copies at both locations), return to your original location and merely delete the data and/or file(s). Yes, this requires extra steps and more time, but what are time and effort worth to you if the consequences of a bad “move” or yanking a blinking drive is total data loss with no backup?
I’m sure the drive lust lost the indicator of what format it is which is why it is showing RAW and 0 bytes and I’m hoping there is some other software that can work.
www.cardrecovery.com has worked very well for me for busted flash drives and video cards, but it is not free. There is free version that will show you if the files are recoverable and the paid version actually goes and recovers them. It is very easy to use.
Testdisk is the one program I’ve found to be the best. I used it to recover most of the files on my sister’s MP3 player.
It isn’t necessarily the most straight forward to use, though. It has a text-based interface. It also comes with a program called Photorec, which can recover files from a drive that doesn’t have a partition table.