# Faulty USB Drive



## katvn (Mar 27, 2007)

Hi, I have a thumb drive which has worked fine up until a week ago. Now when I plug it in, the computer recognises that I have plugged in a USB drive, but no drive letter shows up to access it. I tried it on another computer and the same thing happened. It shows up in disk management, yet I still cannot access it or any files. 

I really hope someone can help. Do you think the drive has been physically damaged?


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## PanamaGal (Jun 3, 2006)

The drive is likely bad. Hopefully it's still under warranty. If not, at least they have become quite inexpensive.


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## katvn (Mar 27, 2007)

I am not worried so much about the drive, I know they come cheap now. But I would really like the data off. I am happy to throw the thing away afterwards.


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## smz (Mar 12, 2007)

Stupid question but is the drive showing up as Healthy in the disk manager on the second machine? If so is when you right click, do you have the option regarding Change drive letter? That can also mean add or remove. Just curious if you've gone down that path. Also, do you have a program like partition magic? It's a comprehensive version of windows disk manager but sometimes can tell you a few more things or correct the partition table if it was detected incorrectly. Finally, once in a while a partition could simply be in Hidden Mode. PqMagic has the option of unhiding as well. Though with a thumb drive, it's doubtful.


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## katvn (Mar 27, 2007)

The drive did show up as healthy in Disk Management, but I had no options available. I came to the unfortunate conclusion that the drive was dead  So I changed my tack, and started to try my luck with data recovery. Most programs can't help because they only recover deleted files, not dead or damaged drives. I found a wonderful program called iRecover http://www.diydatarecovery.nl/irecover.htm It recovered all my files and I bought a new drive  The only thing is that now I am too tight to pay the money for the program, so I am stuck recovering the folders one at a time :grin:

Thanks for your help!


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