Urgent! My USB is corrupted, and it has all my school work on it! (quick answers, please!)?

Question

Please be quick. It has my SOSE assignment on it, and it's due today... and my teacher won't take 'it's corrupted' as an answer.

So, when I plug it into the school computer, and try to open it, it comes up with this message:

'You need to format the disk in drive J: before you can use it.
Do you want to format it?'

And when I say cancel, it says:
'J:\ is not accessible.
The volume does not contain a recognised file system. Please make sure that all the required file system drivers are loaded and that the volume is not corrupted.'

Should I format it? Will this erase all my data? Is my data salvagable? Please help!

(NOTE: I usually back up, but I was running late this morning and didn't bother... hence why I also failed to remove the USB properly.)

Answer 1

Chill out dude. Plug in the USB drive and ignore any error messages that pop up. Press the Windows key (the one with the flag) and "R". This will open the "run" window. Type in "cmd" (without the quotation marks) and click "OK". You should get a black window with white text. Type in the following:



chkdsk X: /R



(Replace the X with the drive letter from your usb. I'm guessing it's J.



This command will analyse the file system structure and files integrity, and try to fix it.



Press enter and wait for it to finish. Chances are that once it's done, it will be all fixed and working fine. If not, go ahead and format it and then go to www.recuva.com and download their software. It will retrieve your information (unless the USB drive is physically damaged). Just DO NOT use the USB drive after the format until you retrieve your files.



Good luck.

Answer 2

Formatting will erase the data though it may still be recoverable, HOWEVER, you should try to recover the data BEFORE formatting. Go to download.cnet.com and do a search for data recovery, there are all kinds of programs available, some free, and for all different OS's. I tired one called pandora recovery and it recovered a good portion of the missing files.



Things to remember...



NEVER recover data to the drive you are recovering from, always choose a different place to save the recovered files.



Format the drive after all the data that can be, has been recovered.



Run a disk check on the drive after formatting to verify there are no faults with the drive that would put you back in the same predicament.



Get a new flash drive after this. Flash drives do not last forever and have a finite number of read/writes that can be performed prefore they eventually fail. At the cost of a new flash drive, can you really afford to let this happen again? At less than a dollar a Gig, they have become very affordable.

Answer 3

The fast answer is that YES, if your format, you will have NO CHANCE of retrieving the data.



Does it work in another computer? Did you create it in under linux and now you're trying to use it under windows? If so, plug it back into the computer you created it from and hope that you can re-save the stuff. Otherwise, your options are extremely limited.

Answer 4

Seems you have corrupted your file system area.If it is the same on another p.c which almost certainly will be you have no option but to format it.

As long as you do not write any data to your usb device your data can be recovered.

A good free program is recuva

Run it with the wizard on deep scan.

When you recover the data it finds output it to another device such as the main hard disk so as not to overwrite the data you are recovering.

Download recuva from

http://www.piriform.com/recuva or



http://download.cnet.com/Recuva/3000-2242_4-10753287.html

Answer 5

"(NOTE: I usually back up, but I was running late this morning and didn't bother... hence why I also failed to remove the USB properly.) "



Try rebooting with the drive plugged in, sometimes it will finish the process that was interrupted.





If you can't access it, it is gone.

Answer 6

fast answer format chance retrieving data work computer create linux windows plug computer created hope save stuff options extremely limited

Answer 7

try open your usb with 7zip or winrar. it works sometimes.