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View Full Version : USB pen drive, lost images!?

martook
26th of July 2005 (Tue), 16:06
My sister called me a minute ago and had a problem. She just came back from vacation ... somewhere. She was staying at hotels where they had pretty new computers, which she connected her camera to and transfered the pictures from her memory card to an USB pen drive thingy. Now she connected the usb memory to her computer back home and lots of pictures are gone :(

The computers at the hotels had USB 2.0 and her computer only has USB 1.1 ... could this affect the usb memory? She's obiously going to try it in another computer ASAP, but do any of you guys have any ideas as to how you can recover things from usb memories? Or if there is something else that can affect how it works?

I'm sure she'll be grateful for any help you can give her :)
tim
26th of July 2005 (Tue), 16:41
Try this (http://home.arcor.de/a.niggemann/dir.zip) image recovery software.
MarkH
26th of July 2005 (Tue), 20:01
My sister called me a minute ago and had a problem. She just came back from vacation ... somewhere. She was staying at hotels where they had pretty new computers, which she connected her camera to and transfered the pictures from her memory card to an USB pen drive thingy. Now she connected the usb memory to her computer back home and lots of pictures are gone :(

The computers at the hotels had USB 2.0 and her computer only has USB 1.1 ... could this affect the usb memory? She's obiously going to try it in another computer ASAP, but do any of you guys have any ideas as to how you can recover things from usb memories? Or if there is something else that can affect how it works?

I'm sure she'll be grateful for any help you can give her :)

USB1.1 and USB2 should make no difference, except to the transfer speed, of course.

If trying it in another computer doesn't help then tries Tim's idea. If image recovery software cannot find anything to recover then the data is probably just not there.
martook
27th of July 2005 (Wed), 01:32
MarkH: I didn't think there is any other difference than speed either, but that's the only idea I could come up with... Let's hope the image recovery works *prays* :)

Thanks for your help guys!
Jon
27th of July 2005 (Wed), 14:31
Yeah. Image recovery or nothing. USB 1.1 and 2 differ only in speed. You can use USB devices in USB 1.1 ports and vice versa without problem.
martook
28th of July 2005 (Thu), 04:09
I just thought I'd tell you how it worked out...

The first part of the memory stick was f*cked up, so the file table was gone, could only see 100 files of 500...

I tried the program Tim linked, but it had some problems, because of the broken sectors in the beginning, but I didn't let it finish, so it could probably have worked just fine. Well worth a try anyway, since it's free :)

I decided to use the program Sandisk recommends:
http://www.lc-tech.com/software/rprowindetail.html
and it worked just fine. Costs 40 dollars, but well worth it in this case. My sister didn't feel like driving another 5000km just to re-do the photos ;)

So, once again, thanks for your help, and I hope I'll never have to do that again!
Andy_T
28th of July 2005 (Thu), 04:26
Good it worked out.

ALWAYS 'savely remove' any USB device via the command before pulling it from the computer. That's one of the main reasons for that thing happening.

Best regards,
Andy
grego
28th of July 2005 (Thu), 04:51
Good it worked out.

ALWAYS 'savely remove' any USB device via the command before pulling it from the computer. That's one of the main reasons for that thing happening.

Best regards,
Andy

It's also good to re-format them a lot, just like a compact flash card.
Andy_T
28th of July 2005 (Thu), 08:19
Yes, but not right after you have lost images :wink:
Have heard that as well ... tried to make the missing sector information correct by formatting :rolleyes:


Best regards,
Andy
MadMesh
28th of July 2005 (Thu), 20:29
just goes to show even solid state devices can fail.
CHARLES E. PHILLIPS
28th of July 2005 (Thu), 23:52
Try this (http://home.arcor.de/a.niggemann/dir.zip) image recovery software.

Please advise/post the name of image recovery software. Thanks?
Andy_T
29th of July 2005 (Fri), 03:27
It's a freeware program called Digital Image Recovery written by a German guy named Alexander Grau.

Couldn't open his webpage (http://63.141.194.5/dir/index.html), but with Google I found a link to a German photography shop / online print service that endorses the use of the software for their clients. Unfortunately, the link is all in German: http://www.happyfoto.de/rescue.php

Best regards,
Andy