Can't access USB flash drive

[Adams Seven]

I suddenly lost access to a USB flash drive while using my laptop on the road. The laptop went into hibernation; when I woke it up, the flash drive had suddenly disappeared. Plugging it into different USB ports didn't help ... or, for that matter, plugging it into USB ports on a different computer. When I plug it in, Windows sees that a removable drive is available, accurately reports it as a Silicon-Power 64G USB drive in Device Properties, and even assures me that it's working properly. But that's it. I can't check for errors, because Windows reports that it can't access the disk. If I try to access the flash drive with the command line, Windows reports 'There is no disk in the drive.' I downloaded the free recovery tool 'Recuva,' as recommended at: 6 data recovery tools for SD cards, USB drives and more - Computerworld and that didn't help. If anyone has any ideas, I hope you'll share them. My unhappy guess is that I either hire a professional data recovery firm, or kiss the files goodbye.

 

[andrew129260]

See if the device is missing a drive letter assigned to it in disk management.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/change-add-remove-drive-letter#1TC=windows-7

 

[jumanji]

Did you check whether the pendrive appears in Windows Disk management?

If it does appear, please post a screenshot of it.( At the moment I am not convinced that it could be a drive letter assignment problem....If it were so it should get a drive letter assigned and show up on any other PC which you have said not.)

In all probability when your laptop went into hibernation, your pen drive got corrupted. But of what sort we have to decipher.

 

[Adams Seven]

Thanks for the responses. I always get a drive letter in disk management, but that's all. I wrote before that the problem came on suddenly, and it did ... but also should have mentioned that it acted up once before. It was my own fault for ignoring the warning! I think I've got a physical problem, along the lines of what's described in: https://www.youtube.com/watch?annot...&feature=iv&src_vid=MBGBC7OGqQM&v=BwvsbUOKGLY ... and am going to chalk it up as a lesson learned. I'll put less faith in USB sticks in the future.

 

[andrew129260]

was it a cheapo one?

As long as it is a namebrand you should not have many problems. I have had sevreal flash drives with no issues throughout the years.

 

[Layback Bear]

Just a thought andrew.
Is it possible when the usb flash drive was installed and the computer was put into hibernate that the system also (in some way) put the flash drive into hebernate and that is where the damage occurred.

I have never used hibernation so I have no experience with it.

 

[Frozwire]

You might want to try HDD Raw Copy Tool as this tool also supports low-level duplication of USB Flash drives for data recovery. If it still have no avail then you might have a better chance of getting your files back with a pro data recovery service at a reasonable cost.

 

[andrew129260]

Just a thought andrew.
Is it possible when the usb flash drive was installed and the computer was put into hibernate that the system also (in some way) put the flash drive into hebernate and that is where the damage occurred.

I have never used hibernation so I have no experience with it.

I guess anything is possible.

But, Never heard of a flash drive going into hibernate. I think it is more likely a file was being written to the flash drive when it was being put to sleep. And then something broke.

Not sure why though.

Only suggestion left is to have disk check check it. But that is kind of hard to do when it does not show up...

 

[essenbe]

There is an option in advanced power management to allow Windows to turn off USB ports to save energy. I believe that is enabled by default. That may have caused the issue. But, I never trust flash drives. I always have the data somewhere else also.

 

[andrew129260]

Agreed.

Its unfortunately sad to lose data like that.

I don't know of any other way to recover it.

 

[Layback Bear]

There is an option in advanced power management to allow Windows to turn off USB ports to save energy. I believe that is enabled by default. That may have caused the issue. But, I never trust flash drives. I always have the data somewhere else also.

Thank you essenbe; you said it better than I did.

I'm thinking that the flash drive was in the process of doing something and stopped with hibernation before it was done; leaving the file corrupted.
Can hibernation do such a thing or will it wait for the process to complete before going into hibernation?

 

[andrew129260]

There is an option in advanced power management to allow Windows to turn off USB ports to save energy. I believe that is enabled by default. That may have caused the issue. But, I never trust flash drives. I always have the data somewhere else also.

Thank you essenbe; you said it better than I did.

I'm thinking that the flash drive was in the process of doing something and stopped with hibernation before it was done; leaving the file corrupted.
Can hibernation do such a thing or will it wait for the process to complete before going into hibernation?

Well, windows does not wait on writing files when shutting down or restarting the pc, so I am thinking hibernate does not either.

Hibernate saves what you currently have open on disk, then turns off. But I think telling the pc to hibernate with a flashdrive in is a bad idea in general. I am confident it would attempt to save the state and screw things up in doing so.

 

[Adams Seven]

Thanks again for the responses, everyone. The drive was a Silicon Power 64.

 

[essenbe]

To the best of my knowledge. Flash drives have no cache, so there should be no damage if power was removed from the drive by Windows. Perhaps it was simply time for the drive to die. Whatever happened, I believe this brings to the forefront, the importance of backing up all of your data to more than 2 places. If you care about your data, it is important to back it up, and have it in more than 2 places. For all hard drives of any kind, it is not a question of if it will die, but a question of when it will die.

 

[andrew129260]

Agreed.