# Access a Dead Flash Drive



## tigpoppa (Dec 25, 2009)

My data is located on a flash drive there are some spreadsheets I need very badly. Today windows 7 went into sleep when it came out and I came back i got the error"Device not Recognized" error as a balloon popup. In device manager it shows up as Unknown Device.

So I also have a dual boot of the distro red hat and xp on my laptop. I cant access this drive on any computer it wont show up as a drive letter. is there any program or software to force the reading of the dirs through red hat or some alternative distro. 





Without performing microsurgery and replacing the host controller if flash drives even have them.

is there any way to repair the boot record?


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## tigpoppa (Dec 25, 2009)

I typed tail -f /var/log/messages

and I get

Dec 24 18:20:20 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 10
Dec 24 18:20:20 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Dec 24 18:20:20 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Dec 24 18:20:21 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 11
Dec 24 18:20:21 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Dec 24 18:20:21 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: device descriptor read/64, error -71
Dec 24 18:20:21 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 12
Dec 24 18:20:22 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: device not accepting address 12, error -71
Dec 24 18:20:22 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 13
Dec 24 18:20:22 COMCAST kernel: usb 4-2: device not accepting address 13, error -71
Dec 24 18:27:03 COMCAST yum-updatesd: error getting update info: Cannot open/read repomd.xml file for repository: fedora
Dec 24 18:27:05 COMCAST smartd[3096]: Device: /dev/sda, 6 Currently unreadable (pending) sectors 
Dec 24 18:27:05 COMCAST smartd[3096]: Device: /dev/sda, 6 Offline uncorrectable sectors 


so the files are still there its a device descriptor error
what can be done to access the file system to retrieve these files or create a new boot record?


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

you could try "testdisk" of testdisk & photo recovery fame 

allows you to analyse the drive and re-write the boot sector

Also if I remember correctly it has allows you you view drive contents and make a backup but I am not sure if it creates an image that can be "opened" or stores files found in normal file format.

go here for further info and the download

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_6.8_Release


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## tigpoppa (Dec 25, 2009)

using test disk it can not see the drive though it does see the primary drive

this may be due tot he fact that even in disk management it cant see the drive either.

that or maybe the disk capacity is not being properly detected.


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

I can only suggest data recovery software that will search for a device that is not recognised. 
Ontrack 
Getdataback,
possibly photorec.

I'll look into some of the better known free software packages to see what is possible. 

Does it Light up when either BIOS, Windows or Linux try to access it ?


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## tigpoppa (Dec 25, 2009)

as stated it can not generate a drive letter so most software will be unable to use for data recovery. being that the drive is under 2gb I am pretty sure that it is not NTFS. Most likely due to its size it is Fat just not sure what type of fat. 

there is a light when i insert the drive so it is getting power


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

most flash drives use FAT or FAT32 but it depends when, where & who formatted it. Don't discount NTFS just because of size. 

you could try to see what gparted makes of the file system should it be able to see it.

If I understand correctly you have checked it out on other PC's .. without success or recognition.

The only software that I remember tries to recover data from drives that don't get recognised is Ontrack Data Recovery 6, but it's an expensive program

I found this list of data recovery software houses and links here 



> > http://forums.techarena.in/hardware-peripherals/990200.htm
> 
> 
> 
> ...


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## tigpoppa (Dec 25, 2009)

ok tried every program on the list each one requires the drive to be visible for data recovery
the drive does light up but is not recognized in windows. so unfortunately 99% of the software will not work. thanks for the hard work in posting all that info even if its copy and pasted I appreciate it.

scavenge seems to work in dos but I think it would still need to be visible in dos for it to access the contents of the drive for recovery


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

Some programs do not require the disk to be visible, I just don't remember which ones.

One trick I have seen is to "swap" a good with a bad drive after BIOS has recognised the good one, hoping that the info stays in memory so that investigation can be made. This won't work though if you boot into windows since windows uses a different method of recognition, ignoring whatever was found in BIOS.


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

Been thinking about your problem, thinking about the possibilities and i was just wondering whether Windows sees your flash drive in Disk management (found by Control panel, Administration tools, Computer Management, Disk Management in XP - regret don't have Win7 to hand to see how to access it)

Windows doesn't normally allocate a drive letter to a drive unless it is formatted and before it formats, it must have a signature written to it. If you can at least initialise the drive you can then try to recover your files before doing anything else to the drive like formatting and repairing it.

Just an idea. Likewise formatting doesn't normally kill your data just tags files so that you can write over them if required. so THEORETICALLY you could try to format the drive from Disk Management and then try to recover the deleted files using one of the other data recovery programs. At the time that the drive is effectively dead, you have little to lose, should you find no alternative recovery procedure - I know, once you get to see the drive listed. Did you give gparted a try to see if it would recognise your flash?

just remembered another software package I used some years back when a flash drive died on me .. file recovery angel .. supposedly designed with recovery from USB Flash drives in mind


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## tigpoppa (Dec 25, 2009)

Thanks for these tips and their very helpful
yes I did try the disc management option.
what I am going to attempt is the method for swapping the drive
what I would ideally like to do is avoid formatting and running any risk of corrupting the data

so when formatted and it tags the data to be overwritten what happens to the integrity of the original file system?


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

the integrity doesn't normally change, at least on NORMAL DRIVES. 

There are many programs on the net which claim to be able to recover data from flash drives even after formatting, providing the original data hasn't been overwritten.

Formatting a drive just renumbers the blocks so as to give addressing information for the data location. It removes the information in the FAT (file allocation table - where file information regarding storage locations that have been used) but doesn't overwrite data or filenames.

Deleting a file will mark a file as not wanted. This is done by changing filename.txt to ?ilename.txt when looked at with any file uneraser program like Norton.

Not sure if Norton still has a troubleshooting program for disk drives. I remember way back recovering partitions that had suffered corrupt identifiers with their software. Back before Norton became too heavy for general Use.


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