Corrupt USB drive

donny-gal

My Iomega 500gb has become corrupted. I think I was copying some data over, and the pc hit a problem and crashed.

How can I try to recover the data on there. I do have most of the data on other places, but some recent data is not available elsewhere.

Is there anything I can download to help or is it an specialist fix?

Thanks
DG

sco0ter

What errors are you getting when you try to access the disk???

donny-gal

It recognises a drive is there, but no size and free space, if I click on it, it says Drive is not accessible. The file or Directory is corrupt and unreadable.

I've tried chkdsk from the command prompt, but get "Unable to determine volume version or state"

Thanks
DG

sco0ter

You could try this

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/file_recovery/info.htm?language=1

It gets good reviews and is free. I have used it a couple of times for recovering the odd file.. It will really depend on what you are trying to recover but it gives a list of files it supports.

albertross_2

you could take the disk out and stick it in your PC, then try chkdsk.

donny-gal

Running the PC Inspector now, seems to have found 3 directories, but about 10 hours to go, so going to go to bed and let it run. If not screwdrivers out tomorrow. Don't panic I have had it in pieces before.
Thanks
DG

donny-gal

Well it has run and found the drive, and comes up with.
DRIVE (Without BootSec) on Windows
If I click Preview it lists Root Directory (unsorted) with files and folders with weird characters for names (sorry dont know how else to describe it)
with the Physical sector etc on the left hand side, these do not change not matter which of the files/folders I click on. They say they are FAT32 file.

What do I do next?
Thanks
DG

Browntoa

I suspect you are physically going to have to look for the files you need, make sure not to save ANYTHING to the USB drive as I suspect this will overwrite the filespace

donny-gal

Sorry - I am lost now. I realise not to write anything to the usb drive, but how do I physically look for them?
DG

ormus

you can try booting from a knoppix live cd.
i use it all the time to retreive files off hdd,s. then save them to another hdd/cd etc..

download knoppix free off the net.

donny-gal

Sorry to be dumb, but not sure I know the next step.

Ormus - it is a USB backup drive, I can boot my PC OK, or am I misunderstanding something?
Browntoa - There are 100's if ot 1000's of files on 500gb, the names of which I do not know, can tbe boot record be mended?

Thanks - DG