USB drive issues

[FactionHeir]

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]

Try another USB place to insert it.

[caravel]

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:

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:

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]

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]

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]

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.

[FactionHeir]

Thanks for the replies, I'll try them out.
I still think though that its most likely an issue with the power as it doesn't work on any laptop or desktop I tried plugging it into, and it worked on all those various systems previously.

[caravel]

If it's a power issue then removing any other USB devices from the root hub should do the trick. If that makes no difference then it's probably not a power issue but a duff drive or damage. Sometimes the solder cracks where the connector is wired to the PCB this can cause problems where the drive is only detected if you push it in and hold it a certain way, or doesn't work at all. In some cases you will hear the system beep but nothing else will occur, that is usually where one or more pins is not connecting or if the drive is damaged.

[FactionHeir]

Hmmm won't work with all USB disconnected either, even after deactivating 5 of my 6 USB root hubs on my laptop and having tested it on a few college computers.

Didn't get any beeps. Just the message that a drive was found but that there was an error in installing/detecting it.

[R'as al Ghul]

That sounds like it was deleted/ corrupted by pulling it off before logging it off. That sometimes happens with my cheapo MP3-stick.
Probably it can be resurrected by reformatting, but I guess the data is gone.

[FactionHeir]

How would I reformat without having access to it?

I pretty much always make sure to disable a device before unplugging it though, so I'm not sure that this is what caused it...

To be fair though, I had this drive for over 3 years and its from SanDisk. I hardly ever used it except to backup before formatting or to save documents once in a blue moon.

[R'as al Ghul]

How would I reformat without having access to it?

He, right. But I thought, because of this:

Just the message that a drive was found but that there was an error in installing/detecting it.

that you could at least right-click it and select format.
That's how it works with my MP3-stick.
Sometimes I need to use a special software that came with the stick, though.
If your objective is to make the stick usable again, then I think there could be a way, but you want to save your data first and my advise is of no help there.

Have you tried to mount it with Linux? Do you have access to a machine runing linux?

[Ramses II CP]

If it's detectable, definitely don't take it apart. All your machines are Windows based? You might try accessing it by booting from a Unix Live CD.

[FactionHeir]

The drive is not really detectable as such. Windows will just give me a message saying that there is something connected to the given USB hub but it doesn't know what it is and I cannot access it (y'know, big yellow circle with black question mark and all)

[Ramses II CP]

Have you tried looking for a manufacturer's driver for the device? You mentioned it had been awhile since you used the device and you'd reinstalled... but then if it's happening across multiple systems that'd be a bit odd.

If the data isn't so critical that you'd pay to get it back I'd still be in favor of cracking her open and having a look... but I'm one of those people that can't help taking everything apart. You might just see an obvious spot where a little solder could save you some money.