Flash recovery tips?

3 posts / 0 new
Last post
Jon
Jon's picture
Offline
Last seen: 12 years 10 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 2804
Flash recovery tips?

I've just found out my USB flash drive is bad. It will be found on a USB bus if I insert it just right, but it has no file system. It's a 512MB drive, but it only reads out 480-ish MB when I dd the main device, on either my mini or my Linux machine, both read the exact same size, though. Does anyone know of Mac OS X or Linux tools for Flash recovery? Free is best, of course. I'm pretty sure it was in FAT32 to begin with.

Offline
Last seen: 9 months 1 week ago
Joined: Dec 19 2003 - 18:53
Posts: 906
Apples' own disk utility?

How about the disk/file recovery utility, on OS X install disks?

Mutant_Pie

Jon
Jon's picture
Offline
Last seen: 12 years 10 months ago
Joined: Dec 20 2003 - 10:38
Posts: 2804
Recovered! I spent some time

Recovered! I spent some time plugging and unplugging it, and cracked the case and pressed and poked at all the components. Finally it recognized, and actually mounted a filesystem. I immediately opened a Terminal window and dd'd a copy of the entire device. It gave me the same file size as the other copies, but this one had readable files on it. When that was done I tried browsing the drive and the files I checked out opened ok. Then I mounted the image I made with dd, which I had named with a .iso extension, and it mounted fine and the files were available there. SO, I unmounted the drive and un- and re-plugged it. It didn't mount. I did it again and it mounted. Unmount and tried again, no mount - and it hasn't since.

I give thanks to a higher power that gave me that fleeting chance to get my stuff back. Nearly all of it I have elsewhere, but I wasn't sure about all of it. Now I at least have a exact copy on my HD in a full backup, filesystem and all.

Log in or register to post comments