flash drive ejected improperly- lost files

Question

I have a flash drive that was used primarily on a Mac, and it was ejected improperly. Now when I put it back in, the computer (I tried 2 different Macs,and 3 PCs) does not even register the flash drive- it does not show up in Finder or in My Computer. Any ideas how to get the lost files back?

Answer 1

TestDisk & PhotoRec (OS X) 6.3 for Mac is a powerful data recovery utility. It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally erasing your Partition Table). PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost pictures or lost files from digital camera memory (CompactFlash, Memory Stick, SecureDigital, SmartMedia, Microdrive, MMC, USB Memory Drives), even Hard Disks and CDRom.

PhotoRec is safe to use, it will never attempt to write to the drive or memory support you are about to recover from. Recovered files are instead written in the directory from where you are running the PhotoRec program. Version 6.3 includes unspecified updates.

This software is also available for Windows, My Computer may not be relevant, as long as it is detected in the disk management snap-in, you should try PhotoRec.

Answer 2

Assuming it's also not showing in the BIOS when plugged into a system, and since it's not being recognized by the OS(s) you tried, the bad news is it sounds dead. The better news is, it may just be the power sub-system, and the data may still be in the flash memory.

I'd have to say your best bet is to send it off to a professional data recovery place that does flash media. Many (most) offer free evalutation and quotation, you just have to pay the shipping. Most also offer that if in the end they can't get it back, you don't pay.

You can then decide if the recovery fee is worth it, without investing much.

Answer 3

If it is not recognised at all (as if device is dead), there are a few ways:

1. Send to a data recovery company.
2. Buy an identical stick and swap the memory module across (careful and be quick, had quite a lot of success with this).
3. Check contacts.

As you said, it is not recognised at all rather than corrupt or not working, this usually means hardware failure more than anything else - so it is worth checking in case it really was yanked out to fast and the contacts broke. If the contacts are fine, it could have just been a cheap stick and has a unknown/cheap chipset, I have seen many that go faulty for all sorts of random reasons and in which case, as I said, moving the memory chip to an identical stick can sometimes fix it.

Answer 4

If the drive is not acting properly (lights on or off) and especially if the drive is elevated in temperature discontinue use immediately. Continued use can dramatically reduce your chances of a positive outcome. A drive displaying no response when inserted will probably require some amount of hardware repair. If you are a weekend solder warrior, do yourself a favor and do not try to to work at flash drive scale unless it looks very familar. I have received plenty of devices with more work needed to clean up dropped solder than the original cause of trouble. Ultimately if the data on the device is important enough and needs to be recovered contact a professional data recovery service such as http://happydatarecovery.com/

Answer 5

I soldered each of the 4 contacts back together. I did not make all for contacts into one. Each of the four contacts was broken in two and I repeaired each one. They are not shorted.

(My grammar seems to have failed me in the first version of my answer... Please remove the downvote. Grammar does not qualify as a useless answer.)

EDIT: The Flash drive was banged into with a Mac Pro by mistake. That qualifies as "ejected improperly" as far as the OS is concerned.