USB Flash Drive issue, need help

Lanz

For a while now, my girlfriend's been using a flash drive, a Sandisk Cruzer 8GB (SDCZ36-0008G, bI10030dkb) , to store some of her Xbox 360 data (as she says, 90% of her old saves and game data). The Cruzer is one of those kinds where you can slide the plug in and out. Basically, for those unfamiliar, it looks like this:



Now, the drive is not working. Symptoms are as follows:

PC: The Drive will show up for approximately a second or so. It will then give a disconnect error sound. It does not stay connected, precluding the ability to read the drive or even reformat. Other drives work fine.

Xbox 360: The light on the Drive comes on, but the drive cannot be read. It does not appear accessible by the 360.

Any suggestions for getting the drive to work again, or at the very least recovering it's data somehow?

Lanz

Anyone?

Bueller?

Seaborn111

Tried to pull it up on a Mac or Linux box? Does the drive show up/disappear from device manager?

robotman5

maybe it somehow malfunctioned?

ben0207

USB drives fuck up and die on a near constant basis. Never use them as the only copy of any given file.

Lanz

Seaborn: Nope, GF doesn't have either to plug it into, only Windows PCs, a BR player and any consoles with USB slots. Haven't asked about checking the device manager. How would that show up in XP/Vista (depending on which PC it's checked with)? I've not dabbled too much with Device Manager on my computers and every time I do my eyes just kind of glaze over in confusion.

Again I should mention: when plugged into a Windows PC, the computer recognizes it for a few seconds but then no longer recognizes it.

I'd really like to be able to recover this data for her, given how much was on there. I'm assuming the last ditch "stick it in the freezer" trick only works for HDDs and not Flash memory, right?

Robotman: any specific ways in mind? I mean, yeah, it's definitely malfunctioning in the "Does not work" sens

Jebus314

When you go into device manager (for xp: control panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Managment -> device manager), look at the box on the bottom right and report how many disks it shows. For example my laptop has a HDD, a CD drive, and a USB plugged in, so it shows 3 disks. Also you should check how big windows thinks the usb disk is.

Lanz

Thanks Jebus, I'll check with her about trying that soon.

Lanz

Just checked, she tried that when it first started giving her the issue, and it didn't appear in the device manager

Jebus314

So my advice was a little incorrect last time. If you look at the device manager you should have a list of all your devices/device drivers. So under device manager you would be looking for either the brand name of your usb or something like "storage volumes -> Generic volume". What I was referring to earlier was the disk management application. Under disk management you should see a listing of all available storage disks. Usually labeled Disk 0, Disk 1, Disk 2, ect...

So when you go into (control panel -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Managment) look at the device manager, disk management, and look for removable storage under the storage section (disk management is also in this section).

Edit - it might also be under disk drives in the device manager.

Double Edit - If you really start getting desperate you can burn a linux bootable dvd, boot into linux, and see if it can read the drive. Preferably a Linux distro and gparted.