USB Drive Issues

[emerge]

Hello everyone,

 

 

I've had a USB drive for a few years now with some essential files on it. Usually, I have multiple backups and I have most these files backed up on external hardware/cloud services. However, there are some files that I forgot to backup and here's where the issue comes in.

 

 

Windows no longer recognizes it, well, it does?

It'll read it for about 10 seconds, and in that time span, it takes a very long time to actually load the drive folder, and the file explorer loading bar takes a while. I was able to access a .txt file on it, and see the data intact.

 

However, after these 10 seconds or so, the drive no longer reads, and Windows (in file explorer) doesn't even recognize that an external USB drive is plugged in.

If I go to disk management, it does recognize that some additional drive is present, but simply shows it with 0 mb/0 mb of data, or unallocated storage (image linked.)
 

After replugging it in, it does the same thing, but slowly the time I am able to access anything becomes shorter and shorter before I'd inevitably have to restart my PC to be able to see anything.

 

The USB drive also runs very hot, very fast, so I'm wondering if it's just total failure.

In short, it seems like there is still preserved data, as I stated I was able to at least access a text file, I just can't do it for long.

 

Any data recovery software doesn't work as it'll find the data, but say it ran into errors because it cannot detect any drive plugged in.

Any help?

 

 

 

[emerge]

bump?

[problemsolver]

On 3/8/2023 at 5:54 PM, emerge said:

Hello everyone,

 

 

I've had a USB drive for a few years now with some essential files on it. Usually, I have multiple backups and I have most these files backed up on external hardware/cloud services. However, there are some files that I forgot to backup and here's where the issue comes in.

 

 

Windows no longer recognizes it, well, it does?

It'll read it for about 10 seconds, and in that time span, it takes a very long time to actually load the drive folder, and the file explorer loading bar takes a while. I was able to access a .txt file on it, and see the data intact.

 

However, after these 10 seconds or so, the drive no longer reads, and Windows (in file explorer) doesn't even recognize that an external USB drive is plugged in.

If I go to disk management, it does recognize that some additional drive is present, but simply shows it with 0 mb/0 mb of data, or unallocated storage (image linked.)
 

After replugging it in, it does the same thing, but slowly the time I am able to access anything becomes shorter and shorter before I'd inevitably have to restart my PC to be able to see anything.

 

The USB drive also runs very hot, very fast, so I'm wondering if it's just total failure.

In short, it seems like there is still preserved data, as I stated I was able to at least access a text file, I just can't do it for long.

 

Any data recovery software doesn't work as it'll find the data, but say it ran into errors because it cannot detect any drive plugged in.

Any help?

 

 

 

Sounds like the drive has/is failed/failing.  You can try keeping it cold and see if that buys you more time to recover data, but don't be surprised if at some point in the future you can't get it to read at all.  I would be copying off any data that it lets me as soon as possible.

[emerge]

On 3/10/2023 at 9:35 PM, problemsolver said:

Sounds like the drive has/is failed/failing.  You can try keeping it cold and see if that buys you more time to recover data, but don't be surprised if at some point in the future you can't get it to read at all.  I would be copying off any data that it lets me as soon as possible.

That's the issue, it's seemingly impossible to copy the data.

It takes a whole 10-15 seconds for explorer to even load the drive folder, and after that I have about an 8 second window to copy files. Any file/folder that is remotely larger in size (e.g, 500 mb) is useless to attempt to copy, as Windows won't detect it for long.

 

 

I think this drive is just a lost cause, and it's unfortunate that I won't be able to retain copies of those certain files.

[OverC1ockeD]

On 3/8/2023 at 5:54 PM, emerge said:

Hello everyone,

 

 

I've had a USB drive for a few years now with some essential files on it. Usually, I have multiple backups and I have most these files backed up on external hardware/cloud services. However, there are some files that I forgot to backup and here's where the issue comes in.

 

 

Windows no longer recognizes it, well, it does?

It'll read it for about 10 seconds, and in that time span, it takes a very long time to actually load the drive folder, and the file explorer loading bar takes a while. I was able to access a .txt file on it, and see the data intact.

 

However, after these 10 seconds or so, the drive no longer reads, and Windows (in file explorer) doesn't even recognize that an external USB drive is plugged in.

If I go to disk management, it does recognize that some additional drive is present, but simply shows it with 0 mb/0 mb of data, or unallocated storage (image linked.)
 

After replugging it in, it does the same thing, but slowly the time I am able to access anything becomes shorter and shorter before I'd inevitably have to restart my PC to be able to see anything.

 

The USB drive also runs very hot, very fast, so I'm wondering if it's just total failure.

In short, it seems like there is still preserved data, as I stated I was able to at least access a text file, I just can't do it for long.

 

Any data recovery software doesn't work as it'll find the data, but say it ran into errors because it cannot detect any drive plugged in.

Any help?

 

 

 

Have you attempted to try to access the drive on another computer and how old is the drive?

[emerge]

21 hours ago, OverC1ockeD said:

Have you attempted to try to access the drive on another computer and how old is the drive?

The drive is about 3 years old, I've tried it on numerous other devices (including one with Chrome OS, which is just a Linux distro at the end of the day.) I find that Chrome OS actually gives me more time to read data off of it, but the same issue eventually occurs.