Sandisk 32g Cruzer

[icenectar]

I am having problems with my flash drive. It was working two days ago but when I tried it this morning, the computer didn't recognize a thing. I've tried other ports and other flash drives (the other drives work). When I pull the drive out, it feels slightly warm to the touch at the point of contact. What concerns me is the fact that I have my entire folder of documents located on this drive. I recently moved it from my old drive because I was having problems with the computer recognizing the drive and I didn't want to lose years of information. Apparently now I'm stuck with the problem I wanted to avoid.

Is there any way to solve this problem? I don't have a personal computer and I don't have administrator access on any of the public computers so I am limited in what I can actually do. When I go into the "Properties" on the drive and click the "check" option, it asks me if I want to format the disk, which is something I really don't want to do. I really need to recover my data. I do a lot of creative writing and as I've said, I've got years of work stuck on this flash drive. I didn't expect this to happen because it's the newest drive I own (which is why I moved my folder over to it from my old one) but it did. Now the question is, what can I do about it?

 

[cliffordcooley]

Now the question is, what can I do about it?

Without administrator access? There is nothing you can do.

 

[icenectar]

I didn't think so. I wish I could afford my own system but I've got loans to pay back. Because of my limitations, should I consider one of those data recovery places? I don't have a lot of money though. The only friend I know with a computer has an Apple. My drives are Windows formatted so I can't go that route...

 

[cliffordcooley]

You might could go to a store that has floor models for everyone to see working. You might can use one of those machines, if you ask (and explain your dilemma) a sales rep to help you out. If you do get access to your drive, it might be a good idea to backup and duplicate your data on at least two drives.

 

[icenectar]

Well my intent was to move the folder over from my old one to this one. I suppose I should have chosen one of my other drives to put it on. I wish I had copied the folder from my old drive instead of cutting it and pasting it to the new one but when the old drive failed, I was afraid of keeping the information on that one. It's not a complete loss though. I have most of my stories posted on an online site. I can copy each chapter and paste into Word but that's a pain. I've got no way of gaining access to some of my photoshop and image files though.

 

[cliffordcooley]

Another option would be using an online storage solution such and MS OneDrive (15G free), Google Drive (15G free), Apple iCloud (5G free), or places like 4Shared.com (15G free) and Dropbox (I'm not finding available free storage).

 

[icenectar]

I might have access to a notebook computer this afternoon. What should I do to fix the problem? I tried the drive again in the computer lab but it still doesn't show anything. It gives it a drive number but tells me I need to format the drive before I can do anything about it. That I don't want to do. What annoys me is that I moved twenty chapters from the site my stories are on to one of my other drives and when I plugged it in today, I had to repair the drive. Plus the folder I made yesterday and the Word file that I copied twenty chapters to, is gone. Now I've got to copy them all over again.

I have never had a problem with Sandisk until now. If I can get the files back, what would be a good flash drive brand to purchase?