I need some sort of data recovery software because my USB flash drive will not open. everytime i click on it, it says "The disk in drive G is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?" I know to click NO otherwise it will erase everything. I tried using free icare data recovery software and it was able to open it and see my pictures but i could not save my pictures. It wanted a key code in order to save them. So is there any other free software that i could use that does not require a key code? what have you used this situation? thanks

 

I used to do computer work as a sideline, and I've had good luck with Photorec. Link

The link is to the main page, you'll find download links there, plus a wiki on how to use it at the bottom of the page. The interface is very basic, and a lot of people don't want to use it because of that. Trust me, if your files are recoverable, photorec will recover them. It's also free software.

I check the forum several times a day, if you have any questions I'll be happy to help.

 

theres a program called recuva mostly pics and maybe some files.....i mostly used it for sd cards and such

 

Hi there,
i clicked the link but i could not download anything, why? what am i doing wrong? and does it work with windows XP home edition? can you help?

 

Photorec is a command line tool. I'd try Recuva first. link

 

I downloaded Recuva and tried it, but it could not read my flash drive. So that didn't work.... I then tried ICare data recovery software and that worked but i could only see my pictures and could not save them. everytime i tried to save them it asked for a key code, and then it asked for $80 to get the key code! ??? Is there any other way to recover my data and not spend a fortune?

 

Time to step up to Photorec. The download link was on the page I linked in my initial post, but I'll make it easy and post the link here: download link
You didn't say, but I'm assuming your OS is Windows. I do not know your level of computer knowledge, so I'll give a step-by step tutorial below.

A tutorial on using Photorec:

• Download the .zip file from the above link
• Extract the files from the zip. The resulting folder will be named testdisk-6.11.3
• Open the testdisk folder
• Open the win folder
• Double click "photorec_win.exe"
• A box may come up asking you if you are sure you want to run. Click "Run" or "Yes"

A black box with white lettering will pop up. Photorec is a text based interface, meaning you don't use a mouse with it. It will look like this:


It is showing you a list of the drives on your computer, including optical drives, and any flash drives. In my case, it is labeled "corsair" so it makes it easy to find. Yours may or may not be labeled similarly. If you have trouble figuring out which one is the drive you're looking for, you can post a screenshot and I'll take a look for you.

Using the arrow keys on your keyboard to move down until your drive is highlighted, like so:



Hit the "Enter" key on your keyboard and the window will change to this:


The correct type of partition for our purposes is highlighted by default, so just hit Enter again, and you will see this:



Since your drive has formatting issues, we want to select "Whole disk".
Use the arrow keys to highlight "No Partition", which should also read "whole disk" out to the right.
Hit Enter.

The next window is asking for the type of file system used on the drive. Since we are dealing with Windows, we want "other", which is highlighted by default.


Hit Enter and you'll see this:


This is where you can choose where to put the recovered files. To make things easier, just type "Y" at this screen and hit Enter. (don't type the quotes around the Y)
You won't need to do anything further until the program finishes.

After you type Y and hit Enter, the screen will change and look similar to this:



It will show that it is running Pass 0, which means it is analyzing your disk at this point. It also shows the estimated time remaining for the pass, in my case 4 minutes.
After Pass 0 finishes, it will show Pass 1 and the estimated time remaining. It will also keep a count on how many files it has recovered.


Be patient. This may take a while, depending on the size of your drive and the speed of your computer. When it is finished it will say the pass is complete.
When Pass 1 completes, simply click the red X at the upper right of the window to close the program.

Now, on to the results...

Go back to where found photorec.exe and you will see new folders named recup_dir.1, recup_dir.2...etc.
Recovered files will be in those.



A warning: you will find ALL recoverable files in these folders. You will have to go through and find the ones you want. When you find them, you can copy them to wherever you wish.



Note that a lot of the files are "junk". Depending on what you have had on the drive, you will find thumbnails, cached images from web pages, etc.
The easiest way I've found to sort them is by size. The thumbnails and cached files are smaller than pictures, so I right click and sort them by size and then select the ones I want.
The file names will also be different, since you are dealing with recovered images. You can change them later if you wish. That's pretty much it. It's a little tedious, but worth it if you want to recover something.

It's not the most user-friendly software, but it does an excellent job at data recovery. If you have any questions, post them and I'll help if I can.

*a note to Admins/Mods: sorry if this post is hard to read. If you want me to make it more readable, let me know.

 

Hi , yes, my OS is Windows XP home edition

what exactly do you mean by, "you dont use a mouse with it"? i can only move the cursor with my key pad?

My flash drive is 4gb total but only half or less space is used on it.

And once it searches and finds all the files, can i just copy and paste all the data onto my computer somewhere? thanks so much

 

Don't be intimidated by command line interfaces. They're really not that bad. I'll go back and turn my tutorial above into a photo tutorial. Again, don't be afraid to ask me questions. I'll help in any way I can. Give me a few minutes to edit the post.

 

I've used a program called Getdataback, but never on an usbdevice. It might be worth a try.

Good luck