Intermittent Flash Drive

[slowto280]

My flash drive with 'way too much' important, needed information on it has pretty much ceased to be recognized. It was intermittent for awhile and I was able to extract some info from it, but now not recognised. Not sure if it has a loose connection somewhere or a virus - it would read for up to a minute or so and then die - jiggling doesn't seem to help. Anyone know of a reliable service that can retrieve information from a flash drive? Or any other tips?? Thanks in advance.

[mixture]

Anyone know of a reliable service that can retrieve information from a flash drive

Yes, but it'll cost ya.

Lesson for the future......

Cheap consumer grade flash drives should not be deemed to be reliable forms of storage.

The golden rule of IT is that you should maintain a minimum of three copies of any critical data, preferably on three different forms of media, and of course preferably not all stored in the same location.

Nearline backup to HD is acceptable as long as you maintain that third copy on a different medium. By the same token, you can count the live copy on your local PC hard drive as one copy, as long as you recognise the inherent risk of doing so.

For any really important stuff, you should look into a tried and tested rotation scheme such as GFS or Hanoi.... this reduces risks introduced by unreliable backup media such as flash drives.

[slowto280]

Who would have known.....

Thanks for the advice - had to look up the GFS and Hanoi.

I'll have to invest in a large external hard drive and learn how to make back-up cd's I guess.

So $12 for a 32gb flash drive is pushing my luck then?

Years back in China, they were selling what showed on a computer to be 8gb sticks. Bought a few, but then when you tried to safe data on them, they would hold only a few Word documents. Go figure....

I found a place online that appears to be on the up and up and will recover data (they say) for about $200. But who really knows?? Haven't researched much as of yet.

[Milo Minderbinder]

usual cause of failure of USB pen drives is that the USB plug has been bent out of alignment and away from the contacts with the circuit board

GENTLY straightening them out often gets them working again (short term...)

[hellsbrink]

Sure it's the USB stick and not the USB port on the PC? Do other USB devices work in the same port and does the stick work in another port?

[slowto280]

Yes, stick as it doesn't work in other ports or computers.

I would take it apart but it is one that has no openable seam - like 'forged' rubber around it. Maybe I will try to slice it open... or just send it off to be read. Rats!!

[hellsbrink]

One thing to try first, and it is just "guesswork" and a long shot.

Get an antistatic bag (you do have some lying around, don't you), put stick in that, squeeze as much air out as possible, seal, stick in freezer for 20 mins.

That MIGHT mean a bad solder joint contracts enough, with everything else, to "make" the contact again for enough time for you to grab the data off with some decent recovery software (a list is in this forum). It worked with me ONCE with a memory card for a camera that decided to "give up the ghost", but I guess you got nothing to lose now.

[Milo Minderbinder]

has he tried what I suggested in post 4?

[hellsbrink]

probably not, milo.

[slowto280]

Milo, I have tried to gently move the plug around to no avail. The drive here is the type that has like 'forged' rubber around it with no seams (it appears). I have searched on line and all of the drives shown there are the type that a person can split apart - this will be difficult here. Even if I got it open, I would have to buy a 'magnified, magnifying glass' to locate the possible broken contact. . Hells, I will locate an anti-static bag (?) and try the freezer trick, it certainly sounds feasible. I will also look here for recommendations on recovery software. You gotta trust a pilot, right?

[Milo Minderbinder]

If the drive hardware is not being recognised, then no amount of recovery software is going to achieve anything as theres a physical fault

However if when you plug it in, the drive is recognised as a piece of drive hardware, but the system simply can't read it then you may have a chance

I have to say though that I've tried various recovery programs on flash drives in the past and never got anything off any of them. The fault always seemed to be mechanical

However if you want to try, start off with a free one called recuva
Recuva - Undelete, Unerase, File and Disk Recovery - Free Download

[slowto280]

Just to finish this off.....

I ended up sending it off to Flashdrivepros (not an advertisement) and they were able to extract all of the information from it. Very pleased with their work, although it did end up costing me a little over 300 US.

All for a 10 dollar flashdrive failure......

Thanks all.

[lomapaseo]

If the drive hardware is not being recognised, then no amount of recovery software is going to achieve anything as theres a physical fault

In the aviation accident investigation side of business we just essentialy resolder the chp to a good circuit board and read it out.

I would hope that the fee charged would cover somehing like this

[slowto280]

I didn't go into detail (I guess I could though) with them how they recovered the info, but they did.

With this outfit, it was a flat rate fee for a certain size drive - with a guarantee no less - no recovery, no pay!! - after doing some research, other places had reports of charging extra if they had to do 'extra' work.

Aviation accident investigation - sounds interesting.

Thanks for the input.

[mike-wsm]

I have an old flash drive (clue: it's 256MB) that occasionally plays up but in a very specific way. It is always recognised at home (was xp, then froyo, now gingerbread) and always ok at the library (xp) but is often not recognised or recognised only on multiple attempts at our internet cafe (several machines, windows 7). I tend to think of this as a Windows 7 issue, but I'm always careful to back up irredeemable data.

External hard drives can be really small, I had one that would slip in an anorak pocket. Anorak, well, parka if you want to be pedantic.

Back in my Windows era I had backup fully sorted. Everything was in My Documents including a folder of downloaded software (I would download to and install from that folder) and backup was simply to copy My Documents into a dated folder on the hard drive. That way I could fully recover my laptop from the original dvd and then copy My Documants back in, complete with all downloaded progs to install. Then a week of Windows self updates and I had a brand-new machine with all my old data.

Hope this helps

[Milo Minderbinder]

as lomopaseo indicates, its rarely the memory chip that fails: just the attached circuit board, or the connection to the USB socket
if you can mount the chip onto something that can read it, the data can be accessed