What's new
What's new

Data recovery from memory stick- any experiences (Europe)

Alpacca Fortyfive

Stainless
Joined
Nov 16, 2007
Location
Leinster, Ireland
Data recovery from memory stick- any experiences?

I'm told data loss is one of life's three certainties, allong with death and taxes.

My good lady's memory stick gives "not recognised" errors, and has a painful amount of work on it.

Has anyone used data recovery companies for this?

What were your experiences?
and do you have any recommendations? (pref in Europe:))

Many thanks.
 
I have use the recovery program which comes with SanDisk compact flash cards. Seems to work ok, but I suspect the more times you use it, if by some chance you're overwriting something, the you may loose data. I have done wipes using XP, and there is nothing to recover. With a plain delete, there usually is. Vista doesn't work the same way as XP with this particular software, and I think with Vista, a delete is the same as a wipe. There may also be other recovery programs to try as well.
 
You can try this yourself and it might work. Remove the nice looking case from the memory stick- you may have to destroy it to get it off. There will be a small PCBA with the USB connector on it remaining. Go to Radio Shack and buy a can of circuit cooler or freeze spray. Spray the memory chip with the freeze spray, and connect it to the PC- if it connects, keep the chip cool until you remove the data. I've been able to do this twice. OOps- I see you are in Ireland- substitute "electronics store" above where Radio Shack is located.
Dan
 
It would be worth pulling off the plastic covers and checking the board to be sure there are no loose/broken connections. USB memory sticks (I assume that's what we're talking about) are all to easy to bump and knock around, resulting in broken connectors. I just repaired a USB stick for just this reason -- a little soldering, and it is as good as new.
 
DFSee

There is software called DFSee that I have used successfully to retrieve data from trashed hard drives. I think it's been updated to accommodate flash drives. You could use it for free, but what you get for the registration cost, is personalized instructions on how to solve your problem by the software author. As long as the flash drive is electrically intact, this may be a solution.
 
the devil's in the detail

We had "not recognised" and "not supported" errors from SWMBO's camera flash memory, under vista, which didn't go away with the use of other Microsoft OS's (XP, NT ), but did go away with Linux. I recovered everything, and then tried the card back under windows - it was not happy, so we junked it and got a new card - all is well.

I never did get to the bottom of precisely what was "wrong" though......

I guess what I'm saying is if its a driver screwup, you may be able to sort it in a similar way to I, and if its a hardware issue, I.E. the stick is "physically damaged", you may have to resort to "Vogon" as mentioned above by Mark Rand. When I was an employee, in a previous life, we used them and they were very good, but unfortunately, as expensive as they are good, which IMHO, was very!

Good Luck with it ( if you want to talk about linux PM me - we now use it exclusively )

Sim
 
I have had no luck what so ever in retrieving data off of dead thumb drives. I downloaded acouple recovery programs and since the computer doesn't even see the drives the recovery software is just a waste.

Since being burned on the elcheapo thumb drives I have become pretty picky on which I buy now. Right now I have two Kingston 4gb and one 8gb and several other oddballs of smaller gb sizes. Most of the smaller ones were freebies from various places.

One thing I have yet to ever fail is an SDHC card possibly they are built to a better quality standard, etc or that they know people would be crazy mad to take acouple hundred pictures on vacation only to get home and see their SD card was bad.

One other note, I have found that at times when the computer "sees" a thumb drive or floppie but windows doesn't or shows it to be corrupted I switch over to Ubuntu and have been able to to get most of the data recovered. Windows has a nasty habit of corrupting something at the start of the data stored and and from then on it considers all the data on that disk or drive no good. Ubuntu has saved me several times.

tim
 
+1 for Ubuntu !

Further to what Tim says above - +1 for Ubuntu, since this is the "flavour" of linux we use, and as I eluded to above, it seems to be able to see thru/round/over many problems which windoze can't. (plus it is free, which widoze certainly isn't, always a big plus for something so useful ).

It may be possible to run a Linux cloud on a windoze machine and mount the drive and recover the data to the local HDD......

Or burn the bootable CD from the web, boot the machine using this, and then recover the data...

Assuming of course you have no physical damage, in which case we are back to Vogon....

ATB

Sim

Can you tell we like Linux yet?!
 
+2 for Ubuntu!

Another vote for Ubuntu!

But again, it may be as simple as a loose/broken USB connector. These are awfully easy to knock around, resulting in one or two broken connections. On the one I recently repaired, it would work, sometimes, if you twisted it just right ... but after a little solder repair, it now works 100% :)
 








 
Back
Top