2 Pendrives went RAW - Can they be saved?


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Hi guys.

 

I guess there is something wrong with my PC, as two pen drives i've recently formated in it went RAW when i inserted them into my laptop. My PC's keep saying that there are no valid filesystem and that i cant format them.

 

Now my question is, can they be saved? I tried all day yesterday, but with no luck. Things i've tried.

 

- Formating through Windows to NTFS, FAT32 and Exfat.

- Formating through Windows diskmanager.

- Tried formating through Ubuntu.

- Tried a couple of tools on Hirens Boot CD.

- Tried using Test Disk

- Tried Using EaseUS Partition Master 12

- Tried Paragon Hard Disk Manager 15

- Tried Minitool Partition Wizard Free

- Diskpart (Many many times)

- Tried WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for Windows

- Hard Disk Low Level Format Tool (Because i became desperate)

 

The drives i have are 

- Verbatim Store N go 64GB

- TakeMS colourline 16GB

 

I really need help here, as I'm becoming more and more frustrated, because i need them to format my PC before monday. 

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How desperate are you?

Flash drives don't have many breakable parts. They can be physically busted as to not connect to the USB port (you'd probably notice), the controller can burn out, or the memory can fail (game over).

You can try repairing the controller if you want - it's simple in principle, but not worth it in most cases.

http://infar.be/index.php?/archives/1002-My-experiences-with-USB-FLASH-drive-drive-repair.html#extended

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It probably isn't your PC. USB drives have voltage regulators in them which can withstand quite big surges, your mainboard's USB bus itself will also have them. They're known as Transient Voltage Suppressors (TVS), even hard drives are fitted with them.

 

I had a 4 week old 32GB drive suddenly die on me, but it was the drive. Chances are if you've formatted it multiple times there's no critical data, so I'd just cut your losses. HDD's that go RAW are usually faulty controllers too. USB drives are so cheap it's easier to just replace them. Years ago when they were expensive I specialized in repairing them, now it isn't worth a dime to do so. Sadly the cheapness also filters through to reliability, which isn't as high as it once was, I don't trust flash chips any more, and refuse to buy an SSD until things improve. Flash chips have a limited number of cycles, a lot less than HDD's.

 

Make sure your replacement is a high quality more expensive one, and keep regular cloud stored encrypted backups. TakeMS sounds like a cheap brand, and Verbatim need to stick to optical media. Their flash drives are pants. Go for Corsair or Kingston, or even Crucial. No cheap Chinese or supermarket crap like PNY, they'll bite you.

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The thing i find weird, is that it happened to two drives in two days. At this point i'm afraid to put another in my computer at the fear of losing that one too. And windows makes the sound when i connect them to the USB port, it just says that they are RAW :/

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I wasn't joking about cooking sometime baking actually does help. I put a pen drive on a space heater and it worked. it was a crappy 1GB memorex but it worked after sitting for 30 mins

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