Hi all,
i've a corrupted USB flash drive (512 Mb) with some unreadable data (documents). First of all i've tried "chkdsk /f [unit]" which return me an error, saying that the volume is read only…
So i tried some tools but without success.
Then i've found this nice article from Microsoft about using Dskprobe.exe
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"RESOLUTION
If you have a corrupted primary boot sector, you can use the Dskprobe tool (Dskprobe.exe) to make repairs by copying the backup boot sector over the corrupted primary boot sector.
The primary boot sector is sector 0 of the logical drive. The backup FAT32 boot sector is located at sector 6 of the logical drive. While in byte view, read sector six of the logical drive and write it over sector zero of the logical drive. "
I've followed the procedure and read the backup boot sector but when i try to write this one on the original boot sector, dskprobe give me an error
"incomplete data writing…..error writing sectors".
Can i accomplish this replacement in another way?
ps.
the owner, told me that she extracted the pen from the drive suddenly when her teacher came back in classroom…
Thanks
—
Lonely Wolf
try to use dd and make sure that the USB is not write protected.
Hi,
there is no external button to write protect the pen P
I'll try to use dd, however yesterday night i tried to mount this pen under linux and tried to copy the doc file on my disc but i got many errors..
Can you actually view the drive and sector 0 using a low level hex editor?
Hi Andy,
yes i can.
I am going deeper in FAT32 details (maybe i could resolve re-formatting the pen, but i think could be more useful for me to study the situation to learn something good P) to try to understand if the problem is related to some error in the struct..
However, when i plug the pen, windows does recognize it, and i see the doc file and a related tmp file…this let me suppose that at the FAT level…"almost" everything should be ok, windows reads files correctly.
When i open the doc file, word collapse, and for example, winhex show me many "error reading sector xxxx"…
It sounds like there is physical damage to the device (bad sector/cluster), where the .doc file resides . The data is corrupted. Formatting the device will resolve the bad sector/cluster issue.
*update* )
I've tried many tools and soft to recover this doc file, but the doc file recovered was unreadable. The only one which allow me to recover the file correctly is ProDiscover. (Windows detect the partition but Partion Magic 8 for example does not!!).
From the cluster view in PD, i recovered each single cluster of the document, and in this way, i was able to reassemble completely the entire doc file, 8 pages.
Ok, now that i've recovered the "lost" file, i'm happy, i've accomplished the first part of my mission P
Now i wanna to format this pen to fix all the issues about bad sectors, as andy suggested me in his last post.
Widows told me that this device is write protected -.-
Chkdsk /f [unit] does not work on it for the same reason.
This lead me to some question?
- if there is no external pin on this pen for write protection as other models, why i should receive this message?
- who/what determines the write protection on this device?
- how i can reformat this "possessed" device? P
Thanks
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use the fat one
then copy all your data local drive then
format your pen drive again and copy all your files. dont copy meta files.