Pen drive doesn't read

[saturdaygig]

I've been handed a problem to look at by my niece. She pulled her pen drive out of a pc and since then she can't read the files. Of course there's stuff she doesn't have backed up anywhere.
When I put it into my pc, it shows up as Removable disk L: but if I click on it I get 'please insert a disk into drive L'

Any ideas how I might try to retrieve something?

[Steve R Jones]

Odds aren't good...But try several more pc's and maybe you'll get lucky like I did a few months ago. PC #5 was able to read it for some reason.

[fink]

Odds aren't good

Ditto..

You could also try using Recuva, a good deleted file restoring utility. It may be able to see the disk and retrieve data. It has an option to restore non-deleted files from a damaged drive/partition which is what may have a bit of a chance of working.

www.recuva.com

It's freeware.

[SuperSparks]

If Recuva doesn't do the trick, you may be able to find something here:

Flash drive data recovery tools

[saturdaygig]

Nice ideas but those tools are not reading anything from the drive. Have to admit this one looks like a loser

[SpywareDr]

http://www.ontrack.com

?

[SuperSparks]

Unfortunately, when flash drives fail, they really do seem to fail. I had an SD card do the same thing to me the other week

[und3rtak3r]

While I agree with the majority of advice that your chances are near zero:
And worse it is a little over 18months since I had to do this type of recovery and I am looking for links to the tools I used start the recovery process.

The fact that the PC can see the device is a point of hope.
The Issue you have is the data area of the Drive that the PC's OS reads to determine what the drive is is corrupted. The area of concern is the same that U3 use to tell the PC that part of the drive is a CD
When this happens on a HDD - We would partition and format the drive.. it is not so simple with the Flash media. You can try the Windows "Drive Management" in "Administrative Tools" and see how you fare there.
Some of the drive manufacturers had free downloadable "Formatting" tools, these were my first line of attack. CHeck on the brand of your drive in case they have such a tool and see how you get on.

Once the PC is able to recognise the media correctly again THEN you can have a go at the file recovery. Many of the tools listed have a very good chance, if there is anything left to recover.

[saturdaygig]

Hadn't thought of formatting first then trying undelete. Unfortunately while every PC I've tried recognises the pen being inserted, none will read or format it.

[und3rtak3r]

Try this tool: http://en.kioskea.net/download/downl...ge-format-tool for the HP USB format tool
It was almost the panacea for pendrive recovery

[saturdaygig]

Try this tool: http://en.kioskea.net/download/downl...ge-format-tool for the HP USB format tool
It was almost the panacea for pendrive recovery

Same result unfortunately. It saw it as drive L, but then when I asked to format "there is no media in the spedified drive"

[fink]

Have you tried a Mac? No specific reason I think it would work... I just think it's worth a try.