USB Memory Stick Recovery

From:	graphitone	18 Mar 2015 22:34
To:	ALL	1 of 77

41441.1
Bonjour la class. The wife's handed me a seemingly dead USB stick, a SanDisk Extreme 16GB job, which had been encrypted. It's got a load of her school planning work on it, and it's not being recognised on her Windows machine. I tried it on my PC, and it installed the drivers, but after that nothing in disk management (which it hung) and no other sign of life other that a flicker of the access light. I've tried PhotoRec which seemed to be doing the job, running from a command prompt, but was going to take over 400 estimated hours to finish, plus I don't know if it'll recover encrypted files. :/ I'm trying Easus Data Recovery which says it will do encrypted files, but it's just a trial. Anyone know of any other software that'll do the job? Don't mind trying it on Linux either, though I think it's an NTFS format. Oh, and no backup was made. :(( Drawings n' that

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From:	ANT_THOMAS	18 Mar 2015 22:39
To:	graphitone	2 of 77

41441.2 In reply to 41441.1
I'd try a Linux Live CD/USB (probably ubuntu) - then use something simple like "dd" to take a full image of the device. A command like this may do the job sudo dd if=/dev/sdx of=/location/you/want/the/image.img /dev/sdx needs to be the label of your dodgy USB stick. It will be something like sda, sdb, sdc etc (probably the later letter) If all that works I'd then transfer the .img to a Windows system and mount it with a drive image mounter (Virtual Clone Drive) and see if that works. ┌─────┐ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ └─┘

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From:	graphitone	18 Mar 2015 22:50
To:	ANT_THOMAS	3 of 77

41441.3 In reply to 41441.2
Thanks, that man. I'll give that a go and report back. :) Drawings n' that

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From:	ANT_THOMAS	18 Mar 2015 22:55
To:	graphitone	4 of 77

41441.4 In reply to 41441.3
If the stick is buggered taking an image might fail or take aaaaaaaaaages. Might be worth unmounting the stick if it gets mounted when plugged in. ┌─────┐ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ └─┘

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From:	graphitone	18 Mar 2015 23:02
To:	ANT_THOMAS	5 of 77

41441.5 In reply to 41441.4
Dah, it's not being recognised by Linux at all - not showing up as a drive under fdisk or df. Drawings n' that

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From:	ANT_THOMAS	18 Mar 2015 23:07
To:	graphitone	6 of 77

41441.6 In reply to 41441.5
Don't worry about that (much). Is it showing up in /dev? Unplug it, do : ls /dev Plug it in, do : ls /dev Is the an extra sdx listing? ┌─────┐ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ └─┘

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From:	Manthorp	18 Mar 2015 23:09
To:	graphitone	7 of 77

41441.7 In reply to 41441.1
Best I've ever come across is iCare Data Recovery, originally referred to me by someone from the possie (was it CHRISSS?). You can jim recent versions through any high street torrent site. "We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked." James Thurber, The Thirteen Clocks 1951 www.mynameislegion.org

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From:	graphitone	18 Mar 2015 23:17
To:	ANT_THOMAS	8 of 77

41441.8 In reply to 41441.6
Something is.. I've got sda 1 through to 5 without it being plugged in, then an sdb entry with it plugged in. However, when doing: sudo dd if=/dev/sdb of=/home/dave/image.img I get an input/output error reading dev/sdb Drawings n' that

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From:	graphitone	18 Mar 2015 23:25
To:	Manthorp	9 of 77

41441.9 In reply to 41441.7
Cheers, though had a quick go with the trial and it's not seeing the stick at all. Drawings n' that

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From:	fixrman	19 Mar 2015 00:49
To:	graphitone	10 of 77

41441.10 In reply to 41441.9

Try Knoppix. Best diagnostic Live version I've ever used.

Did you ever see such a messed up situation in your whole life, son?

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From:	koswix	19 Mar 2015 10:31
To:	graphitone	11 of 77

41441.11 In reply to 41441.1

Chances are it's the controller chip that's dead, rather than the actual flash.

If you could replace the controller with one from an identical drive it *might* work. You do have a hot-air rework station for SMD soldering, right?


 ▪                    
             ┌────┐    ┌────┐                      
          │    │    │    │ ▪                    
          │    └────┘    │                      
          │   ──┐  ┌──   │ ▪                    
   ┌──────┤    ▪    ▪    │                      
  ┌┘      │              │ ▪                    
┌─┤       └──┐  │  │  ┌──┘                      
│ │          │ ││  ││ │   ┌─┐                   
│ │          └─┼┤  └┴─┴───┘ │                   
│ │           ─┘│           │                   
│ │   ┌──────┐  └┬──────────┘                   
  │   │      │   │                              
  │   │      │   │                              
  └───┘      └───┘

If Feds call you and say something bad on me, it may prove what I said are truth, they are afraid of it.

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From:	graphitone	19 Mar 2015 10:38
To:	fixrman	12 of 77

41441.12 In reply to 41441.10
I'll look into that if I get no joy today with it, thanks! I'm trying PhotoRec at work today (I can leave it going on a standalone PC, hopefully it won't take 400 hours). It's a weird one, it eventually got recognised in device manager last night and I could see it listed under the disk drives (at least the manufacturer's stamp) but when going onto the 'volumes' tab it won't populate the volume information on the disk. It also installs the SanDisk drivers when put into a PC. Drawings n' that

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From:	graphitone	19 Mar 2015 10:39
To:	koswix	13 of 77

41441.13 In reply to 41441.11
3 of them, powered by rainbows. Drawings n' that

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From:	ANT_THOMAS	19 Mar 2015 10:45
To:	graphitone	14 of 77

41441.14 In reply to 41441.12
Could be an electrical issue, might be some cracked solder points at the USB plug. Open it up if you can to have a look inside. Heating the connection up or a dab more solder might fix any cracks. ┌─────┐ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ └─┘

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From:	graphitone	19 Mar 2015 10:46
To:	ANT_THOMAS	15 of 77

41441.15 In reply to 41441.14
Good point, I'll find out if it's covered by any guarantee or warranty first. Drawings n' that

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From:	fixrman	19 Mar 2015 10:51
To:	graphitone	16 of 77

41441.16 In reply to 41441.12

So I happened to see a later post first; I second the electrical/controller problem ideas. Sometimes if the drive is left in they get clipped by hands or other objects depending on where it is used. At work we had one we used for daily register backups that would only work if one held it in whilst holding one's mouth right. :-/ Stopped using that one.

Did you ever see such a messed up situation in your whole life, son?

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From:	CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)	19 Mar 2015 16:49
To:	ALL	17 of 77

41441.17
I've got a 4G I put through a machine wash & dry about 5-years ago. Still works great. ---- "Apple Pay accepted at up to 100,000 Coca-Cola machines"

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From:	graphitone	19 Mar 2015 17:20
To:	CHYRON (DSMITHHFX)	18 of 77

41441.18 In reply to 41441.17
But how's the USB stick? Ba dum dum tssh... Drawings n' that

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From:	JonCooper	19 Mar 2015 21:03
To:	ANT_THOMAS	19 of 77

41441.19 In reply to 41441.14
years ago my daughter smashed the connector right off her homework USB stick - I soldered an old bit of ribbon cable between the two broken parts and managed to get the files off before it was officially declared dead. Jon

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From:	ANT_THOMAS	19 Mar 2015 21:45
To:	JonCooper	20 of 77

41441.20 In reply to 41441.19
Thankfully they're cheap enough these days to only be worth repairing to recover the data, then it should go in the bin because it can no longer be trusted. ┌─────┐ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ │ │ │ │ ┌─┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ │ └─┘ └─┘

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