Flash drive requesting format

[Novalee]

So one of our teachers brought her flash drive to me with this problem - I think there is nothing I can do.

No way to open it without formatting.

 

Are there any free data recovery programs I might try to recover the data on there though as it is rather important?

 

Thanks.

 

Novalee

[speckytecky]

Had the same recently - of course it was 'vital' data on it that the teacher hadn't saved elsewhere!

 

I ended up formatting it then ucsing Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download to retrieve what was recoverable. Unfortunately the 'vital' data wasn't amongst what I recovered.

 

So one of our teachers brought her flash drive to me with this problem - I think there is nothing I can do.

No way to open it without formatting.

 

Are there any free data recovery programs I might try to recover the data on there though as it is rather important?

 

Thanks.

 

Novalee

[elsiegee40]

I have had this come up on a few pen drives. Usually ignoring the reformat allows you to get into the drive and use it as normal.

 

One of mine does it on Win 7... On a tube train at the moment, so can't use it to get the exact steps.

[twin--turbo]

The most likly thing is that the FAT has been wiped or is corrupt.

 

I use photorec on linux to scan and restore the files.

[6Foot2]

One of our MFL staff came to us with the same issue yesterday.

 

We supplied her a replacement USB drive and told her to copy the work from her home computer and then over to the school network when she returned. All recovered.

 

We then re-issued our standard advice: Keep important work backed up in more than one location and trust the network to save school-related work safe.