USB Flash Drive - Recovery possible?

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

I have a USB Flash Drive which is a SanDisk Ultra USB 3.0 128GB and I had probably only used it once in 2016 when traveling more to keep it in case my computer broke down or something. So anyways, I took it out and basically when I plug it into two machines, this is what Windows shows:

So it is recognizing the drive with the letter D: but when I right click, properties is not showing a response even after 5 minutes and the This PC still shows a spinning circle on the top. The blue light on the USB Flash stick does blink for one second on and one second off. MiniTool Partition Wizard also is not opening after asking for UAC either. Is there any recovery software that can get it readable again and is there something else I can use to see if there are any problems with the USB Flash Drive? Thanks for any help!

What's interesting is if I manually pull the USB Flash Drive out of the port which is 54 minutes later, the properties and MiniTool Partition Wizard will immediately show up.

Winuser · Oct 3, 2024

You can try a bootable linux live USB drive to see if it can get the flash drive working.

cereberus · Oct 3, 2024

Try it in a USB2 port. If that fails, drive is almost certainly dead or on its way.

Drive is so old it would be very slow anyway.

Ditch it and buy a nice new one.

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

Winuser said:
You can try a bootable linux live USB drive to see if it can get the flash drive working.

So Linux or *BSD is really the only way to get the messages on what may be wrong? Thought Windows had some app/utility that would allow diagnosis of the drive.

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

cereberus said:
Try it in a USB2 port. If that fails, drive is almost certainly dead or on its way.

Drive is so old it would be very slow anyway.

Ditch it and buy a nice new one.

I did try it on a USB2 port as well. I am just trying to figure out if I have anything on the drive itself so want to see what's on it if possible and then just try different things for it as a experiment. Have plenty of new drives which still seems to be slow. LOL.

dacrone · Oct 3, 2024

TestDisk Download

Download TestDisk & PhotoRec. TestDisk is a free and open source data recovery software tool designed to recover lost partition and unerase deleted files. PhotoRec is a file carver data recovery software tool.

www.cgsecurity.org

see what it returns

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

GusGhanem said:
Right-click Start > Disk Management, does it show up?
May be corrupt file system?

This is what it shows for the last 5 minutes...

garioch7 · Oct 3, 2024

@Almighty1 ,

Have you tried testing the drive with Gibson Research Lab's ValiDrive program? It is free. I find it very useful for testing USB flash drives.

Good luck, and have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

dacrone said:
TestDisk Download

Download TestDisk & PhotoRec. TestDisk is a free and open source data recovery software tool designed to recover lost partition and unerase deleted files. PhotoRec is a file carver data recovery software tool.

www.cgsecurity.org

see what it returns

Not having luck with downloading this as with both Microsoft Edge and Google Chrome, it will download all the way to 100% but will just sit there instead of completing.

dacrone · Oct 3, 2024

*PM'd you clean link from my software drive. included x86 & x64

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

@dacrone - It's not the link. The problem is it seems like with the USB Flash Drive plugged in, it is halting all File operations. As soon as I pull the USB Flash Drive, the Save as keeps popping up like 20 of them. Same thing with Validrive.

dacrone · Oct 3, 2024

gotcha. yeah its def a corruption. you can boot from DBAN and try to low level format it from there

Darik’s Boot and Nuke – DBAN

Erase hard drives, desktops, laptops or servers free with a Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) download. Try it now.

dban.org

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

dacrone said:
gotcha. yeah its def a corruption. you can boot from DBAN and try to low level format it from there

Darik’s Boot and Nuke – DBAN

Erase hard drives, desktops, laptops or servers free with a Darik's Boot and Nuke (DBAN) download. Try it now.

dban.org

Yep, as right now, it's 4 minutes with the USB Flash Drive plugged in before launching it and it's still showing this:

dacrone · Oct 3, 2024

prob wont read it in windows. you'll be better off trying to access/fix it from a bootdisk

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

garioch7 said:
@Almighty1 ,

Have you tried testing the drive with Gibson Research Lab's ValiDrive program? It is free. I find it very useful for testing USB flash drives.

Good luck, and have a great day.

Regards,
Phil

Just tried ValiDrive and it's been stuck on this with the spinning circle for the last 5 minutes.

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

GusGhanem said:
Does everything else work normally on that USB port?

Yes, other flash drives do.

cereberus · Oct 3, 2024

Almighty1 said:
@dacrone - It's not the link. The problem is it seems like with the USB Flash Drive plugged in, it is halting all File operations. As soon as I pull the USB Flash Drive, the Save as keeps popping up like 20 of them. Same thing with Validrive.

Run this from admin command prompt

Code:

diskpart
list disks
select disk #  (where # is drive number of flash drive - usually last in list)

If you cannot even select disk, drive is being taken care in the great bit bucket in the sky.

If you can select it, but still not access data, you may be able to wipe drive but all data will be lost.
Frankly, I never trust a drive at this point and would give it an honourable burial.

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

cereberus said:
Run this from admin command prompt

Code:

diskpart list disks select disk # (where # is drive number of flash drive - usually last in list)

If you cannot even select disk, drive is being taken care in the great bit bucket in the sky.

If you can select it, but still not access data, you may be able to wipe drive but all data will be lost.
Frankly, I never trust a drive at this point and would give it an honourable burial.

As soon as I run diskpart, it shows this with a blinking cursor right under the On computer line:
diskpart

Microsoft DiskPart version 10.0.22621.1

Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: DELL-XPS15-9570

Almighty1 · Oct 3, 2024

dacrone said:
prob wont read it in windows. you'll be better off trying to access/fix it from a bootdisk

I have basically on VenToy with Ubuntu Linux Live ISO, Windows 11 24H2 release preview - September 10, 2024 ISO, Hiren's Boot CD PE on 2 different USB flash drives plus one SanDisk 1TB SSD portable. I will be rebooting shortly to fix the 6824 error from DISM Start component cleanup anyways.

So how do I go about checking it in either of those three ISOs?

dacrone · Oct 3, 2024

Quick breakdown of dban here

How to Use DBAN

DBAN, short for Darik’s Boot and Nuke, is a free program that allows the user to quickly and effectively delete all files on a hard drive. This goes for

www.alphr.com

USB Flash Drive - Recovery possible?

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