USB Listed as RAW - Software to Recover Data?

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Hi all,

 

We have used a company to convert some old VHS/Camcorder cassettes to a digital format, and they have provided the data to us on a USB stick. While we were watching the videos directly through the Samsung TV the video suddenly stopped playing. I took the USB key and connected it to my laptop (Windows 10) and I receive a prompt that the disk needs formatting before it can be used.

 

We can turn around to the company and explain the situation to them and they will redo everything, but first I was wondering if there was something that I could try before. I've come across TestDisk which seems to offer partition and file recovery, but I've not used the software before and I'm hesitant about doing something that could make things worse.

 

Does anyone have some suggestions? Has anyone used TestDisk for something like this before?

[nekrosoft13]

depends on degree of failure

 

I had luck with active partition recovery software.

http://www.partition-recovery.com/?gclid=CjwKCAjw06LZBRBNEiwA2vgMVQOGV5ULU7-FsY2ujgLlDOu6TEz8NrOB4pnI5eAu-5xWrRNu4J5zbxoCGiQQAvD_BwE

 

root cause of the issues is cheap USB flash drives, cheap drives are not meant for constant use, they can be used for few minutes here or there, if they are used for long time they will overheat and fail.

[+Warwagon MVC]

First, like he said above, if the hardware just rolled over and died, you might be out of luck. But if it's a file system error, I would first try and see if you are able to do a sector by sector clone of the drive. Then you can mess with it till your hearts content without the worry that some of the software that you try makes the issue worse.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

Meh, it doesn't matter anymore. The guys who did the work are sending us another stick with the videos tomorrow morning. It was just something I was looking at to pass the time.

[+Warwagon MVC]

3 minutes ago, Nick H. said:

Meh, it doesn't matter anymore. The guys who did the work are sending us another stick with the videos tomorrow morning. It was just something I was looking at to pass the time. 

Once you get the new stick, I would immediately back them up to a hard drive

[Louisifer]

this time make a more permanent backup of the usb ?