USB thumb drive corrupt....how to retrieve files?

This past Wednesday I believe I accidentally removed my USB thumb drive from my computer after having the computer shut down instead of “Safely remove hardware and Eject media.” Last night I tried using it for the first time and Windows Explorer shows my thumb drive but without the name I had for it (it just simply says Removable Disk) and inside is what seemed to be like music files which wouldn’t open when I clicked on them.

Seems like the file system is corrupt? I tried using the “Error Checking” that comes with Windows by right-clicking the drive>>Tools>>Under Error Checking clicked Check Now and it did find file system errors and fixed them. Now those music files are no longer there just an empty drive. I tried TestDisk both in Windows 7 and Ubuntu but to no avail. Though the drive states there is 2.99GB free of 3.72 GB which leads me to believe I may still have my files and folders there. All I had were a good amount of zipped .doc and .docx files.

Any help would be much appreciated. I don’t want to reformat the drive since I had a 5 page paper in there due in a couple of days.

 

Hello,
Try Minitools PowerData Recovery (free for home use) and see if it will see your files after a scan. Make sure you do not save the files back to the USB drive.

Minitools Power Data Recovery

How to recover photos from memory stick?

 

Thank you tgell.

Right now it's going through the Full Scan so I will comment back on the results. Anything in particular I should do if it does find what I'm looking for?

 

If this scan cannot find your files, then I would think your chances of getting things back are not too good. There is another option to try besides Testdisk and that would be PhotoRec. This can retrieve files other than photos.

 

Looks like the scan found them! According to the instructions from MiniTool just save them somewhere that's NOT the original drive?

 

Correct, NEVER save the files back to their original location,in your case the flash drive, or you will corrupt them. Save them back to the hard drive of your computer. Make absolutely sure you do this.

 

Looks like the specific document I was looking for wasn't rescued :cry

Thank you though so much tgell! MiniTool definitely gave me a lot more than the other methods I had tried. Definitely worth trying for those who experience a similar scenario.

 

People here also have had good luck with Icare recovery but I have no experience with that product. I believe this is a paid product. Did you try PhotoRec? You might have luck recovering that document you need.

 

I personally use "Recuva" from the makers of ccleaner....

http://www.piriform.com/recuva

recovered "all" of my data from a flash card, very easy to use too.

 

Also available at MG. :-D

Recuva Portable 1.40.525
http://majorgeeks.com/Recuva_Portable_d5514.html
Rating: 4.47 (72 votes)

Bazza