Help getting files off USB thumb drive (mounts then contents disappear after access)

[CZroe]

I have a 4GB Kingston USB thumbdrive that I bought for $10 from Fry's Electronics (Start Trek breanded with the 2009 film and D-A-C game for Steam preinstalled). I recently started to use it regularly, but it really hasn't gotten too much use at all.

It's probably pretty full now with a lot of stuff I don't want to lose. I tried to copy a bunch of videos and pictures for an eBay auction on it to take with me to work and it poped up in the middle of the copy process saying that the "file" E: could not be found. The drive letter itself was still under "Computer" (Win7 64) but the contents were empty when browsed (strangely, no error from the OS about the filesystem or anything). When removed and reinserted, the files would show again until the file copy process was repeated. Removing/reinstering again, I tried to delete some uneeded things and got the message in the middle of the deletion process. I tried repeatedly and could not get a single additional file to delete. It seems that anything that triggers sustained access for more than a couple seconds triggers it. Either trying to copy the files to or trying to delete the files from the drive would cause the access light to blink nearly solid for several seconds and then the contents would disappear. I tried plugging it into another machine (XP Pro 32) and AVG Antivirus would try to scan it, causing it to disappear seconds later before any file access was possible. If I just plug it into the original PC and cancel the autoplay scan, it looks like it will stay mounted and browsable until I try to do something with the filesystem.

I'd like to image it but I can't tell Device Manager not to mount it before Autoplay or something has triggered it to disappear again.

On my XP Pro work PC, it never shows the contents in the first place.

HELP!

 

[Blain]

Boot from a Knoppix LiveCD to get your files.

 

[corkyg]

Mount? Never have seen that. Been using flash memory drives for several years - never had them "mount." I plug 'em in, I get two dings, and the system temporarily assigns a drive letter. Is that "mounting?"

I would say something is haywire with that device.

If you can get a few files copied, then use Explorer to delete them off the device. It may not have enough "freeboard."

 

[CZroe]

Oh! FWIW, I get Delayed Write Failed messages from the OS. Even from my work PC, despite not having even been able to access it yet: insert drive, shows as an empty "E:" drive without ever presenting the files, and the OS is already complaining about delayed writes that failed. Some background process was obviously accessing it, triggered the failure, and then tried to write to it (not sure why it would automatically write to it on an XP machine without ReadyBoost).

Boot from a Knoppix LiveCD to get your files.

I'll try that but I believe that it is triggered by the OS accessing some bad sectors that make the drive go haywire. If I could just image the whole thing and skip those sectors, I might have better luck.

Mount? Never have seen that. Been using flash memory drives for several years - never had them "mount." I plug 'em in, I get two dings, and the system temporarily assigns a drive letter. Is that "mounting?"

I would say something is haywire with that device.

If you can get a few files copied, then use Explorer to delete them off the device. It may not have enough "freeboard."

Just because it doesn't have a "mount" and "unmount" command doesn't mean that the logical actions aren't happening. The drive letter appears and the file system can be accessed. It is mounted. You can remove that using Disk Management.

In this case, after some file access, the files "disappear" but Windows does not complain that the drive needs to be formatted and, instead, just shows the drive as being empty (no contents). Any file access at the time it happens errors out as if a folder/directory had been deleted or a disc/disk ejected.

 

[CZroe]

Damn. I got home and tried it ontheWin7 machine again with disk management open ready to delete the drive letter and it seemed that it didn't do anything. I tried to access it through Computer again and, this time, it wouldn't let me (locked up Explorer). Damn. Now I can't even list the files. I tried to delete the drive letter in Disk Management again and it complained that some programs may be affected but let me delete it anyway. It suddenly started showing "unallocated" as if I deleted the partition (I did not). I reinserted it and it says that the filesystem is "Unknown."

@!#$!%!#$!

 

[CZroe]

Damn. I got home and tried it ontheWin7 machine again with disk management open ready to delete the drive letter and it seemed that it didn't do anything. I tried to access it through Computer again and, this time, it wouldn't let me (locked up Explorer). Damn. Now I can't even list the files. I tried to delete the drive letter in Disk Management again and it complained that some programs may be affected but let me delete it anyway. It suddenly started showing "unallocated" as if I deleted the partition (I did not). I reinserted it and it says that the filesystem is "Unknown."

@!#$!%!#$!

 

[Blain]

Does the Live Knoppix CD give you access to your files?

 

[Modelworks]

Download hxd.
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
Go to extras, open disk, open physical disk
If you can see the data that way scrolling through it then it is recoverable. If you cannot see anything when scrolling through it then the controller on the drive is bad and nothing you can do.


If the data is there in hxd then you can use a program like recuva to get it back
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/datarecovery.shtml

 

[Emulex]

power failure or defective plug. seen it on our D2D offsite units. you can wear out a port, you can overload a port, you can eff up the connector (wire/etc) with enough inserts.

try another pc and hold/angle it

 

[CZroe]

power failure or defective plug. seen it on our D2D offsite units. you can wear out a port, you can overload a port, you can eff up the connector (wire/etc) with enough inserts.

try another pc and hold/angle it

I suspected a physical short but it was very consistent: few seconds of access, then failure on the exact same files/steps regardless of the drive being held perfectly still or not touched. I did try holding it in different directions (it's not nearly the first time I've had one fail and that has been the case before).

 

[CZroe]

Download hxd.
http://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/
Go to extras, open disk, open physical disk
If you can see the data that way scrolling through it then it is recoverable. If you cannot see anything when scrolling through it then the controller on the drive is bad and nothing you can do.


If the data is there in hxd then you can use a program like recuva to get it back
http://www.thefreecountry.com/utilities/datarecovery.shtml

Well, I poped it back in checked Disk Management and it said "Disk 1" had no media. Sure enough, HxD didn't see it (only Disk 0; the HDD).

I reinserted it and it changed to saying that the capacity was unallocated.

I looked in the Device Manage and saw "E;\" as a device with an "!" on it (how a logical drive letter can be a device escapes me, especially one that I had removed). It said either code 10 or 20, "The device cannot start (Code XX)"

I removed/uninstalled it then reinserted and it detected a new device:
WPD FileSystem Volume Driver, also with an exclamation point and "The device cannot start (Code 10)"

Damn. Disk Management still shows 4GB of unallocated space, so it is still "seeing" a drive, regardless of what the Device Manager is reporting. Throughout, HxD could not see it.

Edit: OK. I tried it again (deleting the "!" Device and reinserting) and this time no errors in the DevMan and "Healthy Primary Partition" in DiskMan. I take that back. In as long as it took me to post this, it changed back to "no media." I'd better image it ASAP.

What's a good imaging tool for flash drives?

 

[corkyg]

Looks to me like the device has failed. That is not uncommon. How does your system react to a different flash device?

 

[CZroe]

Looks to me like the device has failed. That is not uncommon. How does your system react to a different flash device?

I agree. Multiple systems fail with it though, so it's the device alright.

I was just hoping for an imaging tool that can image the "unknown" filesystem for a sweep by a recovery application.