Computer Question: Drive Issue

[Terpsichore]

Need some input on how to recover some work I've been doing the last three months from a flash drive.

I had it all saved to an 8GB flash drive, all my charts, observations, time sheets, resource notes, rubrics....

It opened fine last night when I was working on some last bits, I double checked to make sure I have everything saved properly and I go to work on it again this morning and NOTHING!  The folder is there, the document icon is there, but it refuses to open.  Its like there never was a file.  If anyone has any idea on how to get this information back before I decide to launch the drive into low earth orbit, I'm open to suggestions.  Yes, I can redo everything, I never got rid of the originals I was working with, it's more the frustration of the lost time and effort I had put into this, since it was for my portfolio.

[lee n. field]

Start with photorec.  http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

(Photorec is pretty good about getting stuff off messed up file systems on memory cards, memory sticks and the like.  That's what it was written to do.

Any questions on it, ask.  It's menu driven, but doesn't have a nice GUI.

If that fails, we move to the next step.  Whatever you do, don't do anything to the flash drive except try to read it.)

[Terpsichore]

I'm not about to do anything do the drive, but launching it does sound so nice right now, albeit not the smartest option. 

Thanks for the link.  I'll give it a try and hope my work is still there in limbo. 

[grislyatoms]

Does it throw an error when you try to open it? One thing to try is open the application first and then try to open the file from within the application.

I have had some luck using DOS commands to recover stuff from conventional and solid state drives as well. This would require another flash drive.

Get to a command prompt. "Run", then "cmd", or on Win 7, just type cmd in the search bar.

Type in "cd D:\" (D would be the drive letter of the "bad" drive) Hit return.

Type in "DIR" Hit return. If you can see your top level folders, you'll probably be ok.

Type "diskcopy D: D:" Hit return.

Follow the instructions, inserting the replacement flash drive when prompted.


Not sure why DOS is more adept at file recovery than Windows in this fashion, but it has worked for me several times.

[Terpsichore]

It worked!  Thank you grisly!  Most of my work is still there (which was promptly moved to a different drive).  I'm tinkering with a link lee n. suggested to try and retrieve the base paper I'm writing for another project that was on there but failed to show up.  Thank you both. 

[grislyatoms]

Your welcome! Glad it worked out, and good luck with the other file!