Broken USB Key - Programs for recovery? (Update)

ApexMirage

Update: The stick is now showing up in 'my computer', but asks for a disk to be inserted when I try to use it. The handful of program's I've tried to use can't seem to access it to scan for deleted/corrupt files, unfortunately.

Would you guys know of a program that would be able to access my files from a seemingly 'unreadable' usb key?


Original post:

I wanted to drag/drop some files onto my usb stick while it was deleting a handful of files.
I hit Esc to 'let go' of the files that I was about to drop so that I could wait for the delete to complete before attempting the copy, but somehow the escape command both dropped the files and canceled the delete operation.

Moments later, the explorer window showing the USB stick reverts to the 'my computer' window, and my key is no longer detected by any of the USB ports on either my Win7 Desktop or WinVista Laptop. I didn't try my WinXP Desktop, but somehow I don't think it'll change much.

What can I do? I have important school files/projects on it...


Edit: My other usb key works fine on both computers.
Edit2: Googling for this is seemingly impossible

TychoCelchuuu

Were you deleting files off of the stick, or off of your computer? In any case, you can go to the Disk Management screen and see if it shows up there.

bwanie

usb drives fault in all kinds of exciting ways.

best case scenario: your data is corrupt and you need to reformat the stick.
worst case sceario: your stick is fudged to a degree that it simply refuses to format.

ApexMirage

I was deleting files from the stick as it happened. The stick doesn't show up in disk management, and I don't have the option to reformat as it simply isn't detected at all.

=(

ApexMirage

Updated first post

Joe Camacho MKII

Have you tried recuva? It's a very recommended program to recover deleted files under windows.

Are you comfortable using Linux? I would recommend you Photorec:
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

A couple of months ago I had a problem with my HDD, the data partition died or something, under W7 I couldn't access the partition, and W7 didn't stop trying to verify the partition on start.

So, after some research, I used a Linux live cd (Knoppix), which included a program called Testdisk and PhotoRec (There are windows versions of those programs, but when I tried to use them windows was crippling slow, so I used Linux (which was able to see the partition, but it was really slow to access it).

Testdisk is a program that can help you repairt boot files and partitions, which I tried using first, but I wasn't enough tech savvy to recover my partition.

Photorec is a powerful program that can help you recover files from HDDs, I used it to recover thousands of .doc files (had months of office work I hadn't backed up), I did lose some information, but it was better than nothing.

I have to say, I know close to nothing about linux, and I managed to rescue files using that livecd, photorec and some online guides, which I read on another computer while working on my laptop.

ApexMirage

Recuva was recommended by a friend, and it was part of the programs that could not actually start scanning the stick at all.

Another friend is giving me an Ubuntu CD monday, would that work?

TychoCelchuuu

PhotoRec can be run on Windows for this purpose (you only need to know your way around Linux if you're doing the whole LiveCD thing which is for hard drives). The Ubuntu CD will let you check if Linux can see anything, but PhotoRec is a good choice to try.