I plugged in the 2GB USB I’ve been using for a year or so, only to get “The disk in drive F is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?”
eek!
What happened? Can I save the data on it? If I do click Yes to reformat it, will it be stable in the future?
(Yes, I do have backups, but it would be nice to figure out what’s going on.)
Thanks in advance!
You probably unplugged it while data was was still being accessed on the drive.
Some drive rescue software might be able to recover the data, but if you have backups it’s probably not worth the effort. Just remember to use the “Safely remove hardware” button in future.
[quote=“Rik”]You probably unplugged it while data was was still being accessed on the drive.
Some drive rescue software might be able to recover the data, but if you have backups it’s probably not worth the effort. Just remember to use the “Safely remove hardware” button in future.[/quote]
Thanks. Yeah, I know about that ‘safely remove’ feature, and always use it. But the USB is plugged into a laptop, and it’s quite easy to accidentally bump it in such a way that the device disconnects, so this may be a continuing problem.
Does anyone know of or have such drive rescue software I could try? Any recommendations?
[quote=“irishstu”]I’ve had good results with PC Inspector File Recovery:
pcinspector.de/file_recovery/uk/download.htm[/quote]
Just tried it, and couldn’t really make much of the help files or instructions. When scanning for drives, it found several ‘bad parameters in boot sector’ for the USB in question. Under the tab “Logical Drive” it offered “yyyyyyy (with umlauts) on Windows drive F”, which is my USB. But I couldn’t figure out how to move forward from there to repair or recover anything.
Double-clicking on other drives, I get a page showing these folders: Root, Deleted, Lost, and Searched; and Root and Deleted are expandable, with content I can select and save. Clicking drive F gives me a page with the same folders, but they’re not expandable, as if the whole drive were empty.
So, I’m still stuck. But thanks anyway!
Do you think I should just go ahead and reformat the drive?
:help:
Well, if you’ve already got backups, then yes, format away.
However, if you’ve got important stuff on there and you don’t have a backup, then don’t format till you’ve tried everything else first.
Ok, thanks again! 