Question about data recovery from a usb flash drive

SlasnerSb

Member
Aug 13, 2010
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0
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I am wondering if it is possible to recover data from a flash drive that I accidentally formatted through a system reformat by deleting it's partition in the windows 7 reformat setup menu. Ever since the reformat the drive malfunctions and is no longer able to run on my pc
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
762
126
You could try testdisk on it.
If you want to try multiple recovery software, then I would image the USB drive with linux's dd command, or perhaps another program that does raw cloning.
 

Eeqmcsq

Senior member
Jan 6, 2009
407
1
0
"testdisk" is a linux command for "scanning and repairing disk partitions". I've never heard of this command until now, so I have no idea how it works.

http://linux.die.net/man/1/testdisk

"dd" is a Linux low level linux command that will copy bytes from one source into a destination. Elixer's suggestion about using "dd" is to do a low level byte copy of your USB flash drive onto multiple USB flash drives (thus making raw clones of your original USB drive), and try several recovery programs. The idea is that if one recovery program messes up the USB flash drive, you have another clone to try again with a different recovery program.

I've never tried this either with a USB flash drive, so I can't offer any more advice.
 

Elixer

Lifer
May 7, 2002
10,371
762
126
"testdisk" is a linux command for "scanning and repairing disk partitions". I've never heard of this command until now, so I have no idea how it works.

http://linux.die.net/man/1/testdisk

"dd" is a Linux low level linux command that will copy bytes from one source into a destination. Elixer's suggestion about using "dd" is to do a low level byte copy of your USB flash drive onto multiple USB flash drives (thus making raw clones of your original USB drive), and try several recovery programs. The idea is that if one recovery program messes up the USB flash drive, you have another clone to try again with a different recovery program.

I've never tried this either with a USB flash drive, so I can't offer any more advice.

No, testdisk isn't linux specific although it is available for both linux and windows. :)
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk

As for the rest, yeah, spot on.