Flash drive shows drive is not formatted but i have info on it and wont open

[lorbowe]

Hello,
I used my pen drive yesterday and saved info on it. I plugged it into my laptop today and it says it can't be used until I format it. In properties, it shows ALL of the space used, but yesterday not even 1/20 of the space was used. I desperately need the info that is on the drive and can't afford to lose any of it as it is legal educational info.

 

[willard]

Sorry, but your flash drive is corrupted. Most likely from pulling it out of the computer without ejecting it properly. You might be able to recover those files if you take it to a data recovery specialist, but that's going to be expensive.

Moral of the story: Backup your important files, and for the love of god don't keep the only copy on a flash drive.

 

[lorbowe]

I do love God, so everything was backed up except the last file I put on it. Will take me about 4 hours to re-enter. Just hoped I could get it back and save myself the time.

 

[thrasher32]

I think you're boned dude.

 

[martin15]

Hi Lorbowe,
I had faced a similar threat in my Kingston 4gb flash drive.I was not able to access my data.While searching through net I found an application that was very effective to recover flash drives data you can click on this link on more information about the USB flash drive http://www.recoverflash.com/drives.html. You can aslo download the free demo version and give it a try using this link http://www.recoverflash.com/download/recoverflash-windows.exe.

 

[nhasian]

TestDisk, Data Recovery
TestDisk is powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.

TestDisk Step By Step to recover lost partitions and repair damaged FAT/NTFS boot sector
Recover deleted files from NTFS partition

NOTE If seeked lost file are still missing, give PhotoRec a try. PhotoRec is a signature based file recovery utility and may be able to recover your data where other methods failed.

PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, and lost pictures (thus the Photo Recovery name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the file system and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's file system has been severely damaged or reformatted.

 

[ClayBot]

I know this thread is a bit old, but I hope I can help someone out there. I had the same problem when I accidently forgot to safely remove hardware, and came across this post. Here's what worked for me with Windows 7:
1. Click start, go to Control Panel, then Device Manager
2. Right-click “USB Mass Storage Device”, and select “Uninstall”
3. Unplug the Flash Drive and wait a few seconds
4. Plug it back in
5. Windows will give you the same “disk not formatted” error - don't worry...
6. Do not format the drive – click cancel
7. Then safely remove hardware (like you would normally)
8. Remove the flash drive, wait a few seconds, then plug it back in.
9. Now that it has been “safely removed”, Windows should give you a message saying “do you want to Scan and Fix” – Click the “Scan and Fix” button.
10. Check “Automatically fix file system errors” and “Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors”
11. Click “Start” to start the scan, wait for it to complete… and then pray that it works for you like it did for me
Good luck!

 

[Vernon7496]

If anyone faces hard drive data loss trouble, they often need good hard drive data recovery software. However, there are many similar tools available online. But, not all of them could restore all the lost data back completely. Read more information of data recovery here: http://www.freeware-fix.blogspot.com/2013/02/external-hard-disk-recovery.html

 

[GeorgeChua201]

I guess that it is infected by virus.