All files on Flash drive merged into one

[simpsonj]

So here's a new one, a teacher called to see if we could help with her flash drive, it was appearing on her My Computer, but her files weren't showing.

 

Knowing this is usually not a good sign, went over and had a look. All her files have merged into One large (4gb or so) file, with no known extension, and a strange name (which I can't remember off the top of my head). Doesn't look like anything can open it, so I wondered whether anyone had come across anything similar?

 

I suspect the flash drive is corrupted (or possible a virus?), but before I deliver that bad news, I wondered if there was some hope for her!

[themightymrp]

Sounds like a dead drive to me I've had similar in the past, even files reporting to be WAYYYY bigger than the actual USB drive can hold (13 Petabytes was the funniest)

 

You can try a chkdsk from the command line with the /f and /r switches. Or try some kind of data recovery program (I recommend GetDataBack but it isn't free). Maybe Recuva??

[MkII]

Some sort of encryption perhaps?

[simpsonj]

Had thought encryption, but I don't think it has.

 

Might give chkdsk a try

[psydii]

This post may contain no useful content:

 

I am taking you at your word that this file is known to be a concatenation of all the files previously on the disk...

 

Back in the day when most sys admins could write code (or at least script) I seem to recall thIs sort of thing being a practical joke to play on those less capable and working on DOS based systems. I'm guessing that is not what happened here.

 

It might be worth looking to see if there is a common end of file deliminator and trying to use that to give you a clue on how to chop it up.

 

Also you might be able to use photorec to scan the file and extract it's constituent parts.

[Oaktech]

Have you tried opening it with 7zip to see if the contents of the drive have somehow been added to some sort of wrapper?