Neither of our computers will read the store n go
Ugh! ... after typing all this up, then hitting "Post It" and having it ask me the "capcha" - which I typed wrong, it then proceeded to give me this page back again, with everything I typed into the "Solve this problem" box - GONE. I'm not entirely sure I want to support a site that has such a massive, time-wasting bug/hole in their system, but I'll give it a go, in hopes that this might actually help someone, somewhere, some day... ;) (DANG good thing I copied it to Notepad before hitting the button!) (and now same thing 2nd time - maybe I just can't read those dang "capcha" things(?) - well... 3rd try's a charm..(?))
Oh - BTW - Just noticed the "Solution" and "Clarification Request" - I guess it's both... a solution if you have the specific scenario I describe ;) or a clarification request if not!
(I'm also assuming that you mean the Store n Go x-GB (Gigabyte) device, where x is some size that they make, like 2, 4, 8, 16, etc.. - they don't make a 5)
It's difficult to help with such limited information - do both of these computers read various other USB drives, flash or otherwise...? Also, assuming that your answer to that is yes - then can/did you take either/both of those flash drives to another computer somewhere to see if an unrelated computer can or can't read them? (Ideally, one you know is virus-free and virus protected by a decent virus scanning software, that has up-to-date virus definitions. (todays or yesterdays, on any given day)
Then from there, assuming (again) that they're also not readable on other machines (since it would be crazy to attempt to solve every reasonably possible permutation of the problem in regards to missing information mentioned above, I'm just going with a reasonably possible scenario) - they have probably been corrupted by one of a number of various possibilities, including (but certainly not necessarily limited to...) software bugs/errors, system crash or hang, or simply being unplugged without using the usual "Safe removal" via the "Safely Remove Hardware" option on the "system tray" icon, or however else you might access the Safe Removal option, etc...
It's certainly not difficult to get one of these devices corrupted, so again assuming that that's what's happened, then you need to either reformat them, or... if there are files on them that you want(!) - try running some file recovery software, of which there are a gazillion different versions.
Still running with that asumption, including that you have files on one or both of those USB drives - on the topic of which file recovery/disk utility/repair/unerase software to run... depending on how much value the files on the USB drives have, you can go with a very quick-and-dirty file recovery option, or you can be very cautious.
Quick-and-dirty might be something like Google search for one of the huge number of file recovery utilities, and even looking just for Freeware versions, as there are certainly Freeware/Open Source options that will sometimes do the job just fine.
On the other end of the scale, at "very cautious" - you might bring the USB drive(s) in question to a machine that you are certain has no viruses, and has up-to-date (decent) virus software, and definitions. Then you can get any of a number of programs that will create an image of the USB drive(s) - and from there, you can then attempt to recover the files from that image. That way you are certain that the original drive has not been, and will not be further corrupted or modified in any way - assuring you that you will at the very least be *able* to recover the most you possibly could from the drive(s).
Ideally, you would (if you could) *lock* the drive from write access - as in for example, if you have a Secure Digital (SD or SDHC) drive that you're using on a little SDHC-to-USB card reader, the SD(HC) cards have a little switch to write-protect them. I believe a few USB flash drives do as well, but it's not very common for them. You just have to be careful to not write *ANYTHING* to the drive, as any writing whatsoever could potentially destroy a file or files that could have otherwise been recoverable.
So if you're going the safest-possible-route, you find your desired disk-imaging software (even a windows port of dd would do the job, really, assuming you are using windows) - and have it ready... pop in the USB drive, make the image, and then safely remove the USB drive. I'm sure some commercial (and maybe some Freeware(?)) software will be even more careful and tell you when to put the drive in, make the image, and then tell you when to pull it out again, but just doing it manually *should* be sufficient, unless you're uber-paranoid or the files are extremely valuable... (in which case you might want to either buy a good/reputable utility that will do all of it for you, or even get a pro to do it for you)
Once you have the image, then you should be able to use the same, or another utility to mount it as read-only, and then run various and sundry different file recovery utilities on it to your hearts content.
Another thing you can try on the mounted image (or the drive if you're not as concerned about losing the files - decent software *should* be careful enough with your drive, BUT... ) - is to download a number of the Shareware utilities that do file recovery... A number of them will basically scan your drive/image for files and tell you what it has found and can (at least possibly, or attempt to) recover. This can be useful, as you could very easily find that some of them will show/offer to recover some files, while other utilities may show either more or different files(!) Some can also take quite a long time to run, so if you're trying one/some of them, just be prepared to start it and come back in a while or whatever.
Generally, they'll do their scan, show you what files it thinks it has some chance of recovering (maybe telling you which are more likely and which aren't, but there's no guarantees.. but since you have the image, you can at least keep trying different utilities until you are satisfied that you've gotten everything possible from it) -- and then say something like "Please purchase this software for $x to recover these files" - if it's images (or a few other file types, depending on which utility you're using..), some of them will even show you a preview so you know what you're really going to get. Of course if it's Freeware or whatever, you then just select the files you want to try to recover from the list it shows you and click "recover" or "ok" or whatever the button is to actually recover the files.
It's not a trivial process, so while you might find some that will recover all the files that are *possible* to recover - you shouldn't assume that the first one you try has done that, unless you've gotten the files you wanted/needed anyway.
Wow, I think I went a tad overboard considering you posted that a month and a few days ago, meaning you've probably already solved your problem one way or another... so maybe with some luck, at least someone else down the road might be able to get some little bit of useful info from my ramblings! You might try to email me if you have further questions - at Rheal then dot and then Notes and then the at "@" sign at gmail (which is just gmail dot com) If no reply in a few days, I didn't see it so rinse, repeat, as desired.
11/26/2009 12:21:47 AM •
Verbatim...
•
Answered
on Nov 26, 2009
