USB drive issues

**FactionHeir** · 03-13-2008, 00:22

Hi guys (and gals)

I've run into a rather annoying problem: When I backed up my personal documents on two external drives, one a USB stick, the other an external harddrive, before formatting my drives several months ago, all was fine. I then copied over the documents from my external hard drive and deleted the files off the drive to make space for other backups. Well, I ended up having to format a month ago again due to a software issue and now that I want to access my documents, I find that the only backup, my USB stick, refuses to work.

Normally, when plugged in, it will light up its blue light, flashing for a short while before staying lit and being usable. Now, it flashes up birhgtly and then slowly dims down until it is off and its not usable at all.

Anyone got any hints on how I could recover my files from that drive? In my opinion, the files should be fine but there is some problems with the electrical circuit according to the symptoms, but I'm not really sure.

Thanks!

**Caius** · 03-13-2008, 00:24

Try another USB place to insert it.

**caravel** · 03-13-2008, 00:51

Some flash drives have a right protect which causes them to be invisible when plugged in. Check for this first, it's usually a small switch on the edge of the drive.

If that fails plug the drive out, open device manager and from the command line do:

Code:

devmgmt.msc

Right click the plus sign next to "Universal Serial Bus controllers". Now plug in your USB flash drive. What happens?

If the device appears and is detected normally, but doesn't appear as a drive letter in explorer then do:

Code:

diskmgmt.msc

Does it appear there?

If it does then it may be that there is a drive letter conflict (a common problem in XP with removable storage devices). In which case change it's driver letter to something like z and then replugin again and see if it's detected ok. If it still doesn't show up then make sure that all other USB devices are removed and connect the device again into a rear port. Still no joy and try the device in another PC.

**Ramses II CP** · 03-13-2008, 04:57

It really does sound like a power fault, but I'm at a bit of a loss to see how that could be likely unless it was treated roughly somehow. Still, sometimes they fail, you might just be quite unlucky. Listen to Caravel first and work through your software solutions, drive letter conflicts are quite common.

If that doesn't work, and of course only if you don't want to pay for professional data recovery (Quick Google: http://www.eprovided.com/ppc/usb-drive-recovery.html), crack the little fellow open and have a look. It might be something quite obvious.

**TinCow** · 03-13-2008, 14:04

Sounds like a faulty drive. I've had two flash drives fail on me as well. If the information is important, I would pay for a professional recovery and buy a new drive.

**R'as al Ghul** · 03-13-2008, 14:32

There're a lot USB sticks out there that don't have the advertised capacity, as German magazine ct' found out recently.
Meaning, a 512 MB stick may have only 256MB available space.
To test if you've bought such a faulty stick you can use a program that was released by ct'.
Here's the donload page:
http://www.heise.de/software/download/h2testw/50539
click "Zur Download-Seite".
The program is in English and German.