Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Technical Help and How To's HELP PLEASE - I'M DESPERATE!!!

What can you do if a USB flash drive quits working? Is there a way to get the info off the drive (like if you take it to best buy or something?)

I have a Sandisk Micro Cruser 2.0 GB drive. It was plugged into the back of my laptop and long story short, my USB port got bent and a piece of it fell out - yikes! Thankfully I have another one, so no big deal right?

Wrong....

I unplugged my Micro drive and inspected it and it seemed to be okay. I plugged it into the new drive and nothing happened. I tried another USB drive in the same slot and it read that drive just fine. So I decided to try the problem drive in another computer. I plugged it in and - yeah, you guessed it - nothing happened.

I'm dying here. I just wrote 30 pages on a story that - yes, you guessed it - isn't saved anywhere else except on this drive. Stupid I know. I always eventually back up my stories, I just hadn't done it in a few days.

Can anyone help me? Any suggestions to try? Can this info be retrieved any way? PLEASE!!!

A data recovery service might be able to help you out. Check the phone book for one near you. Might be fairly expensive, though.

Otherwise... I don't know too much about situations like this, but I know who does.

Sandisk Tech Support

Not sure if it'll work, but this should be the direct link to the page for 2GB Cruzer2 Micro

At the bottom of the page, towards the right, there's a button to email customer support. You'll need to register with the site, but they should be able to help you from there.

You can also contact them by phone:
1-866-726-3475
7 days a week:
6:00 am. - 6:00 pm. Pacific Standard Time
9:00 am - 9:00 pm Eastern Standard Time

Paul

Paul you are a sweetheart!

Thanks for responding.

I had found about the same information as I continued surfing the internet this morning looking for answers.

SanDisk couldn't help me. All they could do was offer to replace my jump drive - which is great, don't get me wrong... I didn't want to throw a $75 drive in the trash.

I did find some services who did data recovery from broken USB drives, but they all want over $100 to do it. Decided my story wasn't quite worth that.

I've got the stories in my head, it'll just be a matter of painfully dragging them back out of there and into a Word Doc again. Plus they're just never the same if you have to recreate them.

Well, that'll teach me. You won't catch me not backing up my stuff again. Sheesh!

Might be worth cleaning the plug on the sandisk unit with a little isopropyl alcohol or similar. Or plug it into a M-F USB extension cable, those often have better contacts than the average computer socket.

For future reference I'd strongly recommend using a short USB cable, rather than plugging the sandisk into the computer directly - the added flexibility can help prevent accidents. It's not always convenient, but it beats the hell out of losing your ports.

Thanks Marcus. I tried all your suggestions - I agreed that it was worth a shot. No such luck.

Well at least SanDisk has told me I can send it in for a replacement.

Now if only their was a replacement story out there.

Thanks!

If you were working in Word when this happened, sometimes Word tries to leave temporary files behind so that it can autosave without ruining your original file. For instance... you might open Story.doc and there will also be $..ry.doc or something similar temporarily saved somewhere. These files can sometimes be left behind by accident.

It's a longshot, because this file would most likely be on your flash drive right along with the original, but I would search your computer and see if there are any remnants anywhere that you can pick up from. This is especially true if, at one time, you worked on the file from your hard drive.

I wish I could be of more help, however, most of my recovery work involves hard drives.

Thanks Diane.

I had hoped the same thing. I even downloaded a program to help me search for deleted temporary files and backup files.

I found a lot of interesting old files, but none of them were my story. I think you're right, I think the backups or temp writing was done directly to the jump drive.

Oh well. Live and learn. I've already re-written several pages of it and I'm finding my groove again. It will be written again, eventually. :-)

Thanks!