Flash drive recovery procedures

Flash drives by nature are not reliable media. Never store data
you cannot risk to lose. Always make a back up. Some brands are
rs, but static RAM storage by nature is not 100% reliable. Some
ious for unrelaibility - Sandisk cruiser is one of those brands

on flash drives
better than othe
brands are notor
to avoid.

If your flash drive "wigs out", you may be able to restore functionality, howeve
r data recovery in most cases will be catastrophic. A frequent loss of data on f
lash drives is the corruption of the boot sector in the static RAM. Because Wind
ows operating systems treat flash drives like "mini" hard drives, essentially wh
at you have is a corrupted hard disk which must be reformatted to recover functi
onality.
Before attempting a format, see if the drive can be read in another computer. If
it can, great! Attempt to move the data off to salvage. If not, flash drive err
ors can also be caused by bad or corrupted drivers on the host computer. Not all
flash drives export drivers to Windows or the drivers are local. Try to downloa
d the driver (if any) for your flash drive from the manufacturer. Then attempt t
o re-seek your drive.
If neither of these attempts work, assume the data on your drive is toast. You w
ill be forced to low-level format the drive in order to restore functionality.
Before attempting to do so, try a few data recovery programs like undelete or pc
inspector smart recovery. I have had luck in the past with both programs, parti
cularly the latter.
If that is still a no-go, then a format recovery attempt is your only alternativ
e. You are guaranteed to lose data, but you may salvage your flash drive.
1. Find a computer with Windows98 (I think First Edition will work, but I used S
E) and then download and install the driver for it (Windows98 requires a driver
to read the drive). If you don't have W98, then go into XP. Control panel -> Com
puter Management -> Disk Management
2. Plug in the your Flash drive / Memory Stick
2b. The drive should appear, try and open it and get all your data off, if the d
rive doesn't appear there may still be hope (details later).
3. Format the drive as FAT32 under W98. Under XP right click under the flash dri
ve letter. Ensure it is your flash drive, not your hard disk! You will lose all
data when formatting.
4. Recopy your data back, and plug it into an XP machine (if using W98), it's fi
xed. Now if 98 didn't see the drive, there is an HP utility for formatting USB f
lash drives, do a search on these forums for HP and Sandisk and format and it wi
ll probably come up. Try that, if that doesn't work, I'd say there is a 90% chan
ce your drive is hosed.