USB Data Recovery

USB data recovery can be a lengthy process, especially with USB pen drive and external USB hard drive sizes now in excess of 8gb and 500gb.

It is very rare to lose data, but before we attempt any data recovery tips there are a few rules to follow. Always make sure you remove any USB devices correctly this means Right Clicking on the USB connected symbol on the bottom right and selecting Safely Remove and then selecting the relevant device.Removing USB data storage devices improperly is simply the same as powering down your pc by removing the power cable.

3.5 inch External USB hard drives are always mains powered but the smaller 2.5 inch type are usually powered by the USB port itself, depending on the power consumption of the actual drive in the external case, the USB power may not be adequate and the drive may intermittently die and re-start, to prevent this you can get a double USB double headed device cable, this enables you to use the power from 2 USB ports.

If you plug the USB device in and everything appears to be working fine, but you cannot find the drive in my computer or windows explorer, the chances are there is another device using the same drive letter this can happen if the computer has lots of drive letters in use such as

A = Floppy DriveC = Hard DriveD = Hard DriveE = CDF,G,H,I = memory card slots This usually means that the USB drive will be trying to use the same letter as one of the memory card slots.To get around this, right click on my computer, select Manage, Disk Management, you should hopefully see your USB drive in here, right click on it and select Change Drive Letter & Paths, now simply change it to a free drive letter.

If you are using and external hard drive, is it spinning ? simply put your ear to the side of the drives casing to find out, if it’s not spinning, the drive may have a sticking point, by shaking the drive it may move past the sticking point and be able to boot. This an indication that the drive has a hardware fault and does need to be replaced, as one day it will not boot. If the drive spins or you have a Pen drive and nothing above resolves the issue the next step is a scan disk if you can see the drive from windows, Right click on the device from My computer, select Properties and tools and select Check Now under error checking.

If the drive still cannot be accessed the last hope may be some dedicated USB recovery software such as usbdriverecovery

If you manage to recover any data or resurrect your USB drive always make sure you backup your data and reparation and reformat before using.

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