USB stick, "needs to be formatted" data recovery

wacksonjackson · 28 May 2013 at 22:55

Hi,

My friend has recently given me her usb stick to fix but I'm completely lost. She was working in Photoshop on a file on her USB stick when it froze and crashed, since that point she hasn't been able to access her USB stick it says it 'needs to be formatted' I've tried a bunch of recovery software to try and repair the drive without having to format it or to recover the data but not a single one can find any files on it they just display a root of RAW.

So i decided to format the drive and then to try and recover the data after that but it says that the capacity of the drive is 64mb (its a 16gb drive) This is through windows but i also tried HP's usb format tool and that also gives a capacity of 64mb

It has a whole term of Uni work on it so any help would be greatly appreciated, ill happily supply more info if you request it

Thanks

Henry

wacksonjackson · 28 May 2013 at 23:10

No it simply says no media, BUT i come across different situations with the drive everytime i put it into my computer, some times for about a minute the drive appears normal and working (you cant access any content on it though) after this point it just simply goes blank and you cant do anything with it. Some times it works like i mentioned before where it needs to be formatted!
Surely there has to be some way of getting atleast some data off

And funny you should mention that it was one of the first things i said to her when i couldn't really get far!

wacksonjackson · 28 May 2013 at 23:12

also there is a partition in disk management but as like before its simply 64mb

wacksonjackson · 29 May 2013 at 13:18

yeah i tried photorec and testdisk but both dont display the usb in the list. Its in its dead phase though maybe if i can get it back to needs to be formatted i can get something who knows!

wacksonjackson · 29 May 2013 at 13:41

cheers, im just determined i can find a way to get atleast some of it back, plus the challenge is quite compelling.
I think that she may now be making regular backups after this...

wacksonjackson · 29 May 2013 at 13:56

haha ill pass but i cant format that's the point it either doesn't do anything because theres no partition or it just gives me a capacity of 64mb (its a 16gb pen drive) it depends on how its feeling when i plug it in