All CAD files from semester gone...

Had a little incident in class yesterday that I hope someone out there might know how to fix or, at least, have some suggestions about.

It occured in my Engineering Drawing course. The instructor was having a hard time getting Inventor to work on the computers because the program kept crashing. Enter the lab tech. He decides to reformat the lab from a master computer. We run through it once and it stops mid format and doesn't work. At this juncture I notice that my flash drive is still in the computer and I take it out. He proceeds to run through it again and, I think, it works on the second try, though, it may have taken several more tries.

In any case, the computers are up and working again and I stick in my drive. A message pops up that asks if I would like to format my drive now. I clicked "no". Obviously, I know something is up. I go into "My Computer" and instead of seeing the name that I gave my drive originally I see a generic F: drive in its place. I am alarmed. I right click on it and select "explore", hoping to explore it. I get the same message asking me if I would like to format the drive now.

I am now more upset...but not quite into panic mode yet.

The instuctor calls the tech. for me to talk to (he'd left by this time). He tells me that it should not have reformatted my drive as the program he is using does not recognize USB drives. He then suggested I try it out on other computers. I've tried it on three different computers since then and each time I get one of two messages: "Would you like to reformat your drive now?" and "Please insert disk into drive F".

I have yet to say yes to reformating my drive in the hopes that I might possibly be able to get my files off of it still.

It contains all of my homework for this semester. Many, many, many, CAD and CAD Architecture files. Ninety-nine percent of the files have been turned in already and so this loss will not adversly affect my grades. On the other hand, I had really hoped to keep all those files as examples of my work to choose from to put on a disk for my resume. (It also bothers me that all the hours of work that I had put into those files are gone.) So, if I can somehow salvage the files, I would really love to.

Like I said...any suggestions or help would be appreciated.

Mike

 

unfortunately, when you have a USB drive plugged in, it is recognized as the default hard drive for MOST formatting programs.

if you are lucky, you may be able to recover the data using a data recovery program.

i don't have a lot of experience in that area, you might ask around as to which program is the best bang for the buck. sorry to hear about your predicament, hopefully it wont all be lost.

 

That's what I afraid to hear.

I'll try a data recovery program and see what happens.

If anyone has had success with one or has any suggestions, please feel free to post.

Thanks for the response.

Mike

 

I tried the free data recovery programs here on Major Geeks.

None of them worked.

I then tried to format the dive and it wouldn't let me.

On my computer, if I go into "My Computer" and either double click on it or right click on it and choose "explore" it asks me "Please insert a disk into drive F".

If I right click and choose "properties" it says I have 0 used space and 0 free space.

However, if I go into "Device Manager" it recognizes it as a "PNY USB 2.0 FD USB Device". If I right click on this and select "properties" it says:
Device type: Disk drives
Manufacturer: (Standard disk drives)
Location: Location 0

At this point, as much as I would like to recover the lost data, I would at least like to get the drive working again.

If someone knows how I can at least get that going again, I'd love to hear an opinion.

I'm running Windows XP SP2.

Thanks,
Mike

 

go into comp management>disk management ... should be able to format it there .. obviously formatting it would make it nearly impossible to recover your data

also, could you ask your teachers if they have your work backed up? maybe you could get at least some of it back

 

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

I find it odd that the computer at school immediately askes me if I would like to format the drive when I click on it and the one at home asks me to insert some type of media.

Hmmm...

Well, I can recover some of the work, but most of it will be lost.

Thanks again,
Mike

 

Ummm...this is a bit embarrassing, but, how do you get into comp management>disk management?

Do I go into My Computer?

I have Windows XP SP2.

I imagine anyone can answer this if they would like.

Mike

 

it's in the control panel>admin tools>comp management

 

"obviously formatting it would make it nearly impossible to recover your data"

Not necessarily. If you do a full format, yes. If you only do a quick format, you should still be able to use a data recovery program the same. So, only do a quick format. Not a full format.

 

Alrighty, I've got good things to say and puzzling things.

First, I partitioned the drive. (It's supposed to be 512k, but actually read as somewhere in the neighborhood of ~480. I figured this is the same as the discrepancy between the advertised size of a hard drive and the room that you really get.)

I partitioned it in NTSF (I think that's the acronym) as opposed to FAT32. I'm not sure if that would be the right way to go, but it worked.

I then went in and quick formatted it.

I ran PC Inspector File Recovery. I found 275 files. This appeared to be good news, until I saw the file extensions.

I apparently have no CAD files (extension .dwg). Instead I have a bunch of .PNG files and .MP3 files. That's interesting (and funny) to me because I had no MP3 files on that drive at all. I tried to change the file extentions on some of them and then open them in AutoCAD, but that didn't work. I could get them to somewhat open in Maya, but this wasn't a quick fix and will take some tinkering (and those were only the ones with the .PNG extension).

This is not a complete failure as those files that I had as Word documents, jpgs, and GIFFs worked just fine. So, some of the files were recovered in on peice, which is great. So, thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

Now I need to figure out how to sort the remaining (~200) files on my desktop right now. I don't believe all of them are CAD files, they could possibly be parts of CAD Architecural Project files. Heck, I have one labeled as an Excel Spread Sheet and I know I didn't do one of those (btw-when I tried to open that one, nothing came up).

I'm guessing the program I used doesn't recognize .dwg files and did something to them or reassigned them somehow.

I"m not too sure what to do at this point. Should I rescan the drive with another data recovery program? Is there a program out there that would try to find out the correct file type for me or correct the data?

I'll tinker with it when I get a chance, but thanks everyone so far. It gives me hope that all my work this semester will not be lost.

 

funny that the PC Stats newsletter today has a Beginners guide to Data recovery on flash drives

http://www.pcstats.com/ArtVNL.cfm?articleID=1869

 

Thanks for the link.

I followed it and the following happened.

The second program found 831 files on the drive.

It found all of the .jpg and .giff files the other program found but found no AutoCAD files. It didn't find any "mp3"s like the first program I ran did, but instead found a gazillion .txt files. I tried to change the ending of one to .dwg (the autoCAD drawing file type) and AutCAD couldn't read it.

One thing that I did learn from the web site is that the most flash drives are formatted in FAT32. I quick reformatted mine in NTSF. I think I'm going to quick reformat it one more time to FAT32 and see if that helps. I'll wait to see if I get any more replies to this thread before I do however in case the format will further degrade my data.

Well, I think I'm running out of options. I feel like I'm really close to recovering them, since I have pulled files off of the drive and some of the files have been operable.

If anyone has any further ideas, please let me know.

Thanks,
Mike

 

try file scavenger gets all the files that and corrupt ones too

recovery