Bad Thumb Drive

First - I do not know much about computer stuff.

I purchased 2 thumb drive a couple months ago - they are both 8 gig. One is fine the other is junk.

Problem is the Junk one has all of my family (kids) pictures on it. :cry Some of the file names show up as symbols - some the name of the file shows but say graphic can not be displayed when trying to open. About a 3rd of them seem fine. I have 6 gigs of pictures on this thing that I was told is very safe to use. Format it before I use it and done. Would like to find this guy now.. :major

So is there anyway to save my files? Cheap ($10/$15) or free would be the best answer. Any help would be wonderful.

Also what can I do to this thumb once this is over to be able to use it again? Anything?

Thank you for you Help

 

Have you tried accessing the files in more then one different computer?

 

Yes, I've tired the thumb on my laptop and other desktop...exactly the same results.

Thanks for the suggestion though

 

thank you for the program suggestion, but I didn't delete the files. There is a problem with the thumb. I'll try this program, but I don't think it will do what I had in mind.

I did delete everything from the thumb that I could and store it elsewhere. What is left are the pictures that the thumb has messed up.

 

You and me both... I need to make him stop telling every single one of my customers that no, the flash drive is not safe for long-term storage of anything.

FWIW (so you can avoid this in the future), they're not built for that sort of thing at all. The whole purpose of a flash drive and the only thing that they are designed to do, is to transport files from one computer to another. Far too many things can go wrong with a flash drive for it to be a safe medium for long-term... if you're unlucky, all you have to do is to forget to use the "eject" or "Safely remove hardware" command before you unplug it, and you'll get rid of your photos. And then there's all the things that can happen to the drive itself: Run through laundry, stepped on, dropped and lost, chewed on by a puppy, a baby, and so on and so forth. So whoever told you that was perfectly fine is either ignorant or stupid or both, or was too busy selling you stuff to bother being honest.

That said, the program plodr linked to doesn't care how the files vanished, it will try to recover them anyway. Install it, plug in the drive, and start the program and just follow the prompts on the screen. After all, you have nothing to lose from trying.

Then reformat your drive. Most likely what happened was just data corruption, and a reformat will fix that. I doubt there's anything wrong with the actually hardware in it, it's just the pictures that got a bit messed up.

 

Do you have a link or web address for this program? I've tried google and come up with http://plodr.com/index2.html, but the site never loads. I am really feeling like a Noob.

 

plodr posted this link

http://majorgeeks.com/Recuva_d5514.html

Cheers...

 

Recommend using CDs or DVDs to store your pictures on. Or an external hard drive.

 

I have got 1000s of gb in applications and documents plus a lot of other stuff and i learned the same way you have just done in believing flash drives were safe.

I have now invested in a couple of external hard drives that i use just for storage, I still have a lot of stuff on the flashdrives ( i currently have 10) but they are all copied from the HD so if any problem arises i still have a good copy.

Not a great consolation i know but you are not alone.

 

Hi,

I realize this post is several years old but, just in case someone is searching for another possible solution I've used Tune Up Utilities sub-program Disc Doctor using only the "Normal Analysis" parameter with some success.