Aargh - memory stick malfunction

elsien

I stupidly left my memory stick with the stuff I was working on (not backed up as I was taking it home to finish off) sticking out of the computer in the office.
A very non-techie colleague found it, opened it to see what was on it so she could work out who's it was, swears blind she did nothing else, and put it in an envelope for me.
When I got it back and tried to use it, it's telling me it needs formatting. I'm guessing that if I say yes I'll lose all my work, but if I say no it won't open. I don't know what make it is as it's one the company have had their logo put onto and handed out.
Is there any way of salvaging it, or have I lost the lot?

kwikbreaks

elsien wrote: »

When I got it back and tried to use it, it's telling me it needs formatting. I'm guessing that if I say yes I'll lose all my work, but if I say no it won't open.

I'm guessing that you are probably right.

Test Disk....

http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download

may help if you are lucky.

Whitefiver

Could try PC Inspector File recovery - free - here. Recuva is also supposed to be good - also free.

I had a similar problem, and I think I recovered most of the files in the end.

Regards,

White.

(PS it is worth using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon in your notification area - don't just yank the thumb drive out - probably what happened here)

elsien

Thanks -I'll give it a go when I get home. Don't think work'll appreciate me downloading strange things onto their computer.
I could kick myself - I usually email copies of the important stuff to myself to be on the safe side. Sod's law, the one time I don't...

Edit - didn't know about the safe removal thingy, never used it before.

kwikbreaks

elsien wrote: »

Edit - didn't know about the safe removal thingy, never used it before.

Where's the slap hand icon when you need it????

I'm surprised that you haven't trashed one yourself then. Windows doesn't always write to disk immediately so it is possible to yank one out while being written to which can trash files or worse the FAT which screws them up big time.

Oh - you may find that it is fine in your home computer - I've seen similar myself and no idea why it happened.

JasX

try it in a few different PCs of different OSs / ages, some tend to be more tolerant than others,

failing that the recovery options mentioned earlier would be worth a shot.

always use the 'safely remove hardware' icon from the windows tray or you will lose data from time to time quite easily, esp if larger files are involved

EDIT: probably worth scanning for viruses after trying option 1, you never know where they've been

pendulum

Absolutely agree with JasX here, different OSs may treat the memory stick differently, I have been transferring files from an XP machine to my Win7 machine a couple of times and encountered an error saying it needs to be formatted and it did not let me access the files, but when inserted into my Vista laptop it did come up saying it needed to be scanned for errors but then it worked fine afterwards. Definitely try inserting it into different computers before you try anything else.

The_Grandmaster

I would as said above use recuve. Hope it works!

arriva

find someone with a Linux machine and try it there, it will probably work.
Or you could download a copy of any Linux distribution (Xubuntu or Ubuntu for example) install it and copy/burn the contents to a removable media. PS: you can have a Linux distro and Windows running side by side no problem on the same machine.

totalsolutions

Was it protected in some way with a password ?

Up to ten tries and they wipe themselves clean.....