Usb stick is not working?
Asked by
Bart19 (
1020
)
November 15th, 2011
Well today my usb stick completely stopped functioning. It’s not physicallly damaged and it still has its red light flashing but none of the computers recognize it when I put it in. There is no error message and it doesn’t seem to connect to any of the computers at all.
Is there a way I can recover data from it (Yes, yes I know usb’s are a bad storage device but I wrote a massive part of an essay on a public computer today and when I came home it refuses to work) or do I need to visit a specialist?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
10 Answers
Are you sure it’s not working. If you are using Windows, is it possible that it just isn’t mapping to an available drive? If you go to Computer Management, then Storage, then “Disk Management”, can you see your usb stick there? If so, right-click on it and choose “Change Drive Letters or Paths…”
If you really need the data off it then you’ll probably need to send it to a data recovery company. Fortunately this is a lot cheaper than data recovery form a HD. In the UK it’ll cost you about £100, but they throw in a new USB drive.
If you are in Canada, that would be great, because I’m sure could recover data from it fairly easily, not sure where you are though, and mailing it would probably take a while. You can try getting to it in a linux partition.
Has anything happened to the drive like going through the wash, or dryer or anything like that?
I am in England so Canda is quite far. It hasn’t been through the wash in fact, it hasn’t even been knocked or anything. At some point it just stopped working. It has a flashing red light when I plug it in but all the computers do not respond to it.
@Bart19 Download and burn an ISO of the operating system Parted Magic don’t have time to link right now, and boot your computer from the CD. The operating sstem doesn’t install, it just runs off the ram, so you can try it without damaging windows. Try plugging in the USB stick and see if anything is detected, you can use the partition edtor on it to see if there is a file system the same size, you should be able to mount it and get something, and copy it to the hard drive.
Thanks for all the help!
For some reason it suddenly decided to work again (I used the weird put the usb in the freezer tip and it actually worked?!) and I managed to get all of my files off. :D
That doesn’t make sense for a flash drive, since they are solid state, but oh well. just remember, backup backup backup.
Glad it’s working. If it happens again, try it in another PC if you have one available. The freezer has nothing to do with it. You can look in device manager and see what the usb controller does when you insert it.
No rocket science here.
Now that you’ve got your files off it bin it and get a new one.
Answer this question 
This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.
Composing members:
0
