USB flash memory

real · 16 Apr 2008 at 16:03

Hi,

I have a Corsair Flash Voyager 256Mb. A couple of days ago I plugged it into the laptop as usual, explored the drive and nothing was on it. It appeared as though the data had been lost. Plugged it into a laptop with vista and was prompted to format the drive. I didnt, because of the hope that maybe there is some method or software that could help recover the orignal data. Is this possible?

Thanks

strelly · 16 Apr 2008 at 16:15

Give this a go:

http://www.snapfiles.com/get/restoration.html

Its a freeware portable application called restoration, i havent had a reason to use it yet but it looks promising!

postmanfw · 16 Apr 2008 at 16:44

not freeware but

http://www.file-recovery.net/

is a really good one too.

real · 16 Apr 2008 at 17:50

Thanks for both your replies.

I tried restoration and it didnt find anything at all on the drive which I thought was abit weird. Didnt fancy paying for the file-recovery and the trial can only recover files less than 64KB.

However, what could have caused the drive loose the data in the first place? Its now been formatted and I seem to be able to store data on it as before. But can it be trusted considering what has happened?

Thanks

strelly · 16 Apr 2008 at 17:57

Have you walked past any massive magnets, radiation or explosions?

Flash drives are meant to be very good at holding memory, i hear stories of them surviving washing machine cycles etc!

Personally i would buy a new one (they are cheap as chips now!), but if not just keep backing up and hope it doesnt happen again!

real · 16 Apr 2008 at 18:33

Not that I can remember!

And to think I bought a Corsair device in the hope it would be more reliable than some of the other cheaper generic types.

Stevev · 16 Apr 2008 at 20:56

You could try http://www.recuva.com/ , it's free and is made by the same company that makes ccleaner

real · 17 Apr 2008 at 15:26

Thanks Stevev. Just tried recuva but with no luck.