USB Memory Stick - Formatting Problem

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rabdash

Hello,
I have never formatted my memory stick, and it had worked perfectly for about 4 months, until today, when I tried to open the memory stick, and got the message "The disk is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?" Basically, I guess have to format it to open it because its not opening, and I cannot format it because I will lose really important school coursework...!! Any help?
Thanks,
Catherine xxx
 
Ah. :(
See I dont mind that the memory stick is broken, it was cheap, I can get another one, but I just need the files on the memory stick to be recovered, because its for school :(
Any way I can recover the files?
 
OK, will try! :) Thanks

Any other suggestions welcome guys...:D
I have tried a few programmes for recovering, to no avail, hopefully I'll have some luck with this one...
 
Something has changed!! Instead of saying it needs formatting, now it says there is an " I/O error" !!??? Anybody know what this is? How to fix? I will still try the programme you suggested though kimsland!



And we are back to formatting....sorry guys...
 
There is only one more option

You need to contact the manufacture support site of your USB flash drive, sometimes they have software utilities (similar to format) on their drives (I note that many flash drives do not have any labelling)

Oh, you have tried it in another computer of course. :rolleyes:
 
You need to try a data recovery program. It's the only hope of saving your work. I recommend GetDataBack at http://www.runtime.org/ You can try it free and if it detects anything then you need to purchase it to run the recovery. If it can't detect anything, it didn't cost you anything.

In future, you should backup your school work to CD-R or DVD-R. Faslh drives are good storage but they can fail as you just discovered.

Repost with results and we'll take it from there.

Best,
-- Andy
 
kimsland said:
There is only one more option

You need to contact the manufacture support site of your USB flash drive, sometimes they have software utilities (similar to format) on their drives (I note that many flash drives do not have any labelling)

Oh, you have tried it in another computer of course. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Yup, I tried it in my parents computer :)
I will email the company, although apparantly they're pretty bad, its Cruzer I am with
 
almcneil said:
You need to try a data recovery program. It's the only hope of saving your work. I recommend GetDataBack at http://www.runtime.org/ You can try it free and if it detects anything then you need to purchase it to run the recovery. If it can't detect anything, it didn't cost you anything.

In future, you should backup your school work to CD-R or DVD-R. Faslh drives are good storage but they can fail as you just discovered.

Repost with results and we'll take it from there.

Best,
-- Andy
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice! :)
I backed up my work a few weeks ago, although obviously this school work isn't important anymore! Typical! Its the recent, unbacked up stuff I need!
 
almcneil said:
You need to try a data recovery program. It's the only hope of saving your work. I recommend GetDataBack at http://www.runtime.org/ You can try it free and if it detects anything then you need to purchase it to run the recovery. If it can't detect anything, it didn't cost you anything.

In future, you should backup your school work to CD-R or DVD-R. Faslh drives are good storage but they can fail as you just discovered.

Repost with results and we'll take it from there.

Best,
-- Andy
Click to expand...

Alas, they didn't find anything...:(
Any more for any more? :)
 
Often if one data recovery program doesn't work, none of them. You can still try but I doubt any other one will work.

Sounds like your flash drive failed. I've had 3 die on me since I started my business 1.5 years ago. It happens from time to time.

While I'm at it, you should do two types of backups. First, backup your important work to CD-R or DVD-R every week. Also, you use an image backup utility. What these do is backup EVERYTHING on your hard drive, exactly they way it is stored. This means it's more than just your files but your Windows, programs and settings too! This is referred to as "imaging" your hard drive (also called "ghosting" or "cloning") If your Windows installation ever gets corrupted, you simply restore from your last image backup and *POOF* you're back and running like nothing ever happened in 20-30 minutes! It's like magic! I've installed it on many customers computers and a few ha to use and really saved their skin!! I recommend Acronis True Image (http://www.acronis.com)

Best,
-- Andy
 
Yup, I'm guessing my memory stick really is gone...:(
Well, I guess I'll just re-do some of my work, its time better spent than trying to fix what is definitely broken...
If there is anything else that is beyond the norm in terms of data recovery programmes then hey, I am all ears! :)


Do you reckon it would make a difference if I formatted it, and then tried to recover the data???
 
No, when you reformat, you're erasing/overwriting the file system with a new one. All previous data is lost.

You can try another data recovery program but likely it won't work. They all work pretty much the same (use same algorithms) and, at this point, it sounds like the flash drive has failed.

if it makes you feel any better, this is not the first time I've encounter a customer in your situation. Backing up work is not as simple as it seems at first, It depends on how much effort you want to put into it. It isn't until someone loses something important, THEN they start backing up or using more sophisticated backup techniques, i.e. image backups.

Best,
-- Andy
 
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