New memory stick needs formatting

longwalks1

I bought a new memory stick a few weeks ago and transferred all my docs onto it, its worked fine until tonight when I plugged it into my laptop is came up as drive , but was not recognised and said it needed formatting before use. Any ideas? As it has worked fine til tonight, and i dont want to format it and lose anything on it
Cheers

gjchester

britishboy wrote: »

I bought a new memory stick a few weeks ago and transferred all my docs onto it, its worked fine until tonight when I plugged it into my laptop is came up as drive , but was not recognised and said it needed formatting before use. Any ideas? As it has worked fine til tonight, and i dont want to format it and lose anything on it
Cheers

Chances are its died and needs returning for a replacement or throwing away. Anything on it is probably gone, You can try Recuva on it (http://www.piriform.com/recuva) but if that fails it may be an expensive process to get the files back.


If it was not from a "reputable" source, it may be also be a fake, or a low capacity one formatted to look like a large capacity.


Its misbehaved once, its best that you replace or throw it away now before you put something critical on it. USBs are pretty cheap, so unless its a monster size safer to replace it that risk using it again

iltisman

I think I have had that happen before when putting the stick into a second computer.I formatted it in the original PC (after backing up the data) then it worked fine.

GunJack

before anything else, boot your pc with a puppy linux (or other linux version) cd, and see if you can read/recover your data....linux is generally more forgiving than windows in these circumstances

longwalks1

Gjchester
I've downloaded Recuva but still no joy, its coming up with a message:

Failed to scan the following drive: F:: Unable to determine file system type

I'm desperate to fix it as it has OH CV on there and i need to uplaod it by tomorrow (I know i should if kept a 2nd copy)

Any other ideas people?

gjchester

britishboy wrote: »

Gjchester
I've downloaded Recuva but still no joy, its coming up with a message:

Failed to scan the following drive: F:: Unable to determine file system type

I'm desperate to fix it as it has OH CV on there and i need to uplaod it by tomorrow (I know i should if kept a 2nd copy)

Any other ideas people?

Try GunJacks solution,

Go to http://puppylinux.org and download the ISO to burn to CD or USB, Theres a reasonable good article here, https://www.winhelp.us/recover-files-using-puppy-linux.html You want to follow the biit about running it in "live" mode, this runs from the CD or USB and while a bit slower than from a hard drive, lets you access the computer without disturbing the existing operating system,

It may be that it can help get the data off the USB stick this was, as the drivers to read the USB stick will be different, but its a long shot.


Do you have access to the system you copied it from, it may be a little out of date but may save you having to start from scratch (and sorry I know that's not what you want to hear...)


Good Luck...

Fightsback

britishboy wrote: »

Gjchester
I've downloaded Recuva but still no joy, its coming up with a message:

Failed to scan the following drive: F:: Unable to determine file system type

I'm desperate to fix it as it has OH CV on there and i need to uplaod it by tomorrow (I know i should if kept a 2nd copy)

Any other ideas people?

As gunjack said earlier your only other hope is to try a Linux live distribution and run that from a CD or another working USB stick.

http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm

Failing that then I'd suggest flowers and chocolates as this may help to defuse a combustible OH however there is guarantee that this method will succeed.

GunJack

must admit, I'd have tried puppy BEFORE Recuva, but 'tis done now....

tavernman

I would try systemrescuecd usb i believe it also has testdisk/photorec on it
http://www.sysresccd.org/

henm2

Booting up any of the 'live' Linux distros can often help. As well as the different varities of 'Puppy' other good 'live' ones include Knoppix, LXLE, Parted Magic, Linux Mint (all versions), Lubuntu.
Once booted the file manager can often locate all relevant connected drives, examine the contents of folders and therefore let you copy and paste items to another back up drive.

longwalks1

Thanks all
Are there any idiot guides on these processes, am I'm the worlds worst with a computer, and I'm desperate to recover the files/folders.

Henm2 - Can you give me your comment in back to basics please, for an idiot. I'll love you forever if you can