Damaged USB Flash Drive

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Y

YES-62

Reputable
Jun 3, 2014
4
0
4,510
Recently plugged my flash drive into my friend's computer and now my problem manisfests this way:

It does not show up in My Computer.
It does not show up in Disk Management to assign it a letter to it.
It does show up in the Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media as USB Mass Storage Device.
It does show up in Device Manager with it's complete name, not just as USB Mass Storage Device.
It is the same when plugging in any other computer, 7 different ones to be exact.
I also tried uninstalling the drivers for the usb on this computer and even used a brand new computer to try to make sure it doesn't have anything to do with the Drivers or USB ports.

It my be worth mentioning that my friend's computer got the LNK Shortcut Trojan on his computer at that time, which affected 2 of his flash drives, fixed that using the "K:\attrib -s -r -h *.*" in CMD and installing Bitdefender Antivirus, that was fast and easy, but since I can't read mine there isn't anything like that short a solution.

I am not interested in repairing it, only in recovering the data on it and if I can do it on my own as it will save me some money.
 
Solution
hang-the-9
Sort by date Sort by votes
hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
60,387
1,081
152,940
If it does not get seen in disk manager, likely the connection between the USB interface and flash memory is bad. Need to get that looked it. It's possible to move the flash memory to another device but that may be too pricy.

The computer is seeing that there is a USB something plugged in but nothing past that.

Also do not store single copies of things in flash drives and even external drives. Or ANY drive for that matter. Flash drives fail often, USB port power surge, yanking it out while it's mid-write or read, flex from using it, just too many ways to damage it.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Y

YES-62

Reputable
Jun 3, 2014
4
0
4,510


Thank you for the reply.

I will be more careful in the future and back-up everything on it, it was that i edited the documents directly with out moving them this time.

I went to a firm that makes free diagnostics and they said it is something related to the memory (maybe they said ROM, not sure) of the stick, not the storage, I do not know what that is supposed to be, but they said it was kinda serious and asked for 150 euro (185$) to move data.

Can you explain how there can be anything physically damaged and the device showing in Device Manager ? (I mean i uninstall it and when i plug it in it installs it's drivers and it shows up there, just not in any other place)

If I have an exact same model of the stick can I just move the storage component of it to the second one, plug it in at least once and copy everything ?

Also could this have been caused by a virus or some power fluctuations, how can I prevent this from happening in the future ?

Thank you !
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
hang-the-9

hang-the-9

Titan
Mar 25, 2010
60,387
1,081
152,940


Sure you can try to move the memory modules over to the other stick or even try to repair the connections between the USB device part and the flash memory, but do you know how? You need some pretty fine soldering tools and very steady hands in addition to knowing what do disconnect and reconnect. $185 to recover data from a physically damaged flash drive sounds like a normal price. Memory of the stick IS the storage on it. That's what I said was likely the issue, the interface between the storage and the electronics for USB functionality is broken. That is why it comes up as a USB device but no further. Think of it as someone cutting a spinal cord. Your brian and body are still there but the connection between them is gone.

It's just damaged, only thing you can do to keep that from happening is to be carefull how you move the drive. A virus won't cause this issue.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom