In short, my PC is unable to read a USB stick of mine that has some backed-up files on it. A dialogue box comes up saying “Location is not available: [drive] is not accessible, the file or directory is corrupted and unreadable.” I’ve tried uninstalling/reinstalling the driver, and attempted a check & repair with no joy.
Leaving aside the philosophical conundrum of how many backups of backups should be considered “safe”, does anyone have any hints for getting the data off it (even if it’s only once before disposing of the USB stick?) There are also many recovery software packages out there – it doesn’t have to be free (it’ll be worth paying out to get this data back), but I’d appreciate any recommendations before I invest in one… thanks a lot folks, enjoy the rest of your your day!
`Worth a lot` you say, hmmm……..
Seriously @metal-mickey I hope you are able to recover the info.
What operating system are you using?
If it’s Windows, which version is it?
If it’s Windows, have you run CHKDSK against the USB drive from the Command prompt?
I have had some luck in the past using the free versions of software from ‘Easeus’ and ‘Recuva’ – you can Google for them. I think Easeus has a Mac version as well if that’s your flavour.
I’ve found this very useful.
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk
It’s terminal based but very straight forward in use. This will talk you through it:
https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
Good luck.
Piriform Recuva?
Changed my life .
Ooh Piriform … Piriformed for you
Did you have to? I’ve done meself a mischief belting that out.
Good job I’m wearing…. er, sturdy shoes.
If it’s a standard USB stick then, unfortunately, it’s most likely unrecoverable. These devices have a tendency to go bad over time, and the data is most likely lost. The ‘drive inaccessible’ message means that the device is not responding correctly to the initial USB negotiation queries.
Have you tried it in a different USB socket? (socket could be faulty)
Have you tried it in a USB socket on a different computer? (USB driver fault on your computer)
Has some gunge got into the USB connector on the stick or does it look damaged?
If it’s visible in Explorer and a requester comes up as files are corrupted then getting something like Piriform Recuva is a reasonable bet, especially if you have business-related stuff that you don’t want to lose. It’s not the very best there is but the very best recovery software is pretty expensive and getting a data recovery company to do it will cost an arm and a leg.
Any luck @metal-mickey?
Thanks for checking in, Vulpes! Actually I was saving this job for the weekend, though I have downloaded Recuva in preparation… thanks to everyone for the advice so far, I’ll let you know how I get on – cheers!
Hello again everyone. Thank you all for your help, it’s really appreciated. Just to check in and say that Recuva (the free version, yet) has been my saviour here, so thanks to those who suggested it.
For the record, trial and error established that (for me in this instance) Recuva preferred working on smaller batches at a time, rather than trying to recover the whole USB in one go. Having done about 5 sessions to date, I’ve so far managed to salvage around 110 of the 130 files on the stick, which I very much consider to be a “win”! I’m still trying to recover the stragglers a few at a time, and though I don’t think I’ll quite hit 100%, everything from here is “gravy”…
Thanks again everyone, once again The Massive comes through!
@metal-mickey Top news!
I had a 3TB external hard drive fail on my system today. Windows seems to now think it’s never been initialised.
Fortunately it’s just one of the four cloned drives with my music and podcasts on them and all the photos and videos on it are backed up to one of the others too. I only backed it all up a couple of days ago, so no data will be lost.
I’m expecting it’s replacement, a 4TB compact HDD to arrive tomorrow from Amazon but meanwhile, as an exercise, I’m scanning the failed drive with some data recovery software to see just what’s recoverable after such a failure.
I had a couple of external USB drives fail in the 39-in-the-shade summer of 2019. None of the drives in my (fan-assisted) NAS have ever blipped in the 6 years I’ve had it.
HDDs don’t like the heat, so sticking them in a plastic case is setting a countdown clock.
Other things which could be at fault are the wall-wart power supply and the USB to SATA board inside the case. Try extracting the drive from the case and using it in a cradle. I bought one for about 20 quid.
This one and another that I have are drives I bought un-cased quite a few years back and put in separately-bought USB3 cases myself. In fact I think these two 3TB drives were replacements in the same cases for 1TB drives that got filled up. 3.5″ Seagate Barracuda Green drives, which, although not very fast I’ve found are fairly quiet and never seem to get hot in use.
They’ve never overheated, even in that hot ’19 summer they always remained cool to touch. Not a power or interface issue AFAIK because it’s powered up and getting scanned as I type. It’s been scanning for about 10 hours and still about 25% to go.
In my experience, if a drive has failed once it’s likely to do it again soon, so I’ll be replacing this one and probably the other one too before long.
The Maxtor 4TB portable 2.5″ USB3 drives I’ve bought before and have found very reliable (I have three of them) seem to be out of production, so the one I’m expecting to arrive tomorrow is a Seagate STGX4000400. £80.81 from Amazon.
If I remember correctly, the Maxtor 4TB portable 2.5” drives are what used to be Samsung HDDs…..
Basically, Seagate bought Maxtor in 2006 (way before there were 4TB 2.5” HDDs) and Samsung in 2011. They kept the Maxtor branding for there “value series” HDDs. All were manufactured by Seagate.
What ? Are English USBs ,like the population, heat intolerant?
Hard drives that get really hot in use rarely last long, I’ve found.
In general, computer gear that runs really hot doesn’t seem to last long.
You have to interrogate the drive Table of Contents with the Command Line editor, where you will find the CRIKEY_IT_IS_HOT, I_AM_PARCHED and IS_IT_G&T_O’CLOCK_YET bits all set to 1.
I just can’t afford the running costs of G&T-drinking hard discs.
I have trouble enough keeping myself supplied with the stuff.
Turns out to have been a USB glitch, either on my HP laptop or the drive caddy. When plugged into the USB port on another computer, it showed up perfectly readable and a full disc surface test, which took a little over 30 hours to complete, showed not a single bad sector on it. Ho hum..