Flash USB Drive Recovery?

[NinkobEi]

Okay, so I am in need of some help here. A friend of mine has a lot of important data on a flash usb drive. For some reason he defragments this drive, but it never finished. 8 hours later he finally gives up on it and removes the drive from his PC. The Drive is no longer FAT 32, but RAW format. Is there a program or method to retreive this info? I've heard that one can use a hex editor to try to recover but I'm not familiar with that process. Any advice is welcome. Thanks in advance!

 

[temp02]

I personally like Active@ UNDELETE, simple to use, just select the device, run a simple scan on it and recover the folders and files you want, although if this was caused by a failed/canceled defrag some (maybe just one or two) of them are probably corrupted (incorrect sector address).
After you recover the files, format the device with windows and copy the recovered data to it again.

This is a demo program that allows you to recover files smaller than 64KB, for anything bigger you need to buy it.
Alternatively you can try Free Data Recovery Software, which like the name says, it's free.

 

[phenomenon1991]

hard to say...but there are few chances to retrieve info...If i find some clues or info...of course I'll share with you, because I'll need this some day

 

[NinkobEi]

Okay thanks. I'm about to try one of the programs listed above. Will report back ;D The office tech guy said it can possibly be done with a HEX editor to change the RAW format back to Fat32. I'm so unfamiliar with this its not even funny, however, and doubt I will make an attempt.

 

[NinkobEi]

Okay finally recovered about 90% of the files with a program called Drive Rescue. Pretty simple to use and straight forward. There were loads of random deleted files on the USB drive as well that it found.

 

[phenomenon1991]

I couldnt' find anything, but you found something, thanks man...drive rescue...I'll keep that in mind when something goes wrong with my USB flash drive...
thanks