Flash drive file recovery

Former user wrote on 1/2/2017, 3:54 PM

A friend of mine recently had a 16 gig flash drive (loaded with stuff) start insisting that it needs to be formatted. My assumption is that it has developed some sort of read issue(s). I've done the typical web search for recovery software, but I'm reluctant to just download anything that pops-up on Google.

Does anyone out there have any recommendations for file recovery software (that will work on Flash drives)?

Thanks.

Comments

ushere wrote on 1/2/2017, 4:51 PM

i've used the free recuva once or twice with success. they're all pretty much of a sameness if you ask me ;-(

Former user wrote on 1/2/2017, 5:44 PM

I use Piriform's ccleaner all the time -- thanks for the tip. I'll give their "Recuva" a try. Downloading it now :-)

ushere wrote on 1/2/2017, 7:14 PM

good luck...

Former user wrote on 1/10/2017, 11:32 AM

I thought I'd follow-up on the file recovery project. My friend estimated that the Flash Drive should have around 3,000 files in 20 or so folders (PDF / JPG / DOC).

  1. First off, it appears that Recuva can't recovery data from a drive that is "un-readable". You are required to do a quick format on it first. Which of course, does some damage of its own.
  2. Recuva "recovered" 27,500 files (!?!) from the flash drive. This took a couple of hours.
  3. About half of the recovered files had serial numbered filenames with no extensions that I assume were some sort of Windows housekeeping files. So, those were just deleted.
  4. Quite a few files / fragments were not completely recoverable, so those were also deleted.
  5. I was left with around 9,000 files (no folders) -- but instead of their original filenames they had all been assigned numbers for filenames (eg. [00001]), but the files did retain their extensions.
  6. So, I spent the better part of 3 days opening each and every document file. If it wasn't readable I would delete it, if readable I would make a best guess as to what to name it. There also were a whole bunch of duplicates, so they were deleted as well. Image files were quite a bit easier. If Windows couldn't create a thumbnail of the image then that file was deemed bad and deleted right from explorer.
  7. Ultimately I ended up with 1780 PDF files, 780 DOC files, and 625 Image files.

I guess the upshot is -- if you're going to put that many files on a single device, be sure to have some sort of backup. In fact, backup the backup as well ;-)

My friend now has a Carbonite account and already has a substantial set of files safely stored on the cloud. Oh, and a couple of backups on my own system(s).

NickHope wrote on 1/10/2017, 7:18 PM

Thanks for the follow-up jdw. Glad you got some of it back.

There also were a whole bunch of duplicates, so they were deleted as well.

Every now and then I use Duplicate Cleaner Free and it has served me well. It would probably be useful in this situation.

Former user wrote on 1/11/2017, 8:55 PM

Hi Nick,

Man, I wish I knew about Duplicate Cleaner a few days ago! That would saved me a whole lot of work. I did download a copy of the Free Version on the off chance this sort of thing comes up again :-)