CHKDSK made it worse

[ceagle]

Just so you know... (so maybe it doesn't need to happen to you)

Something I don't think I've seen before: On a flashdrive, I opened a folder to see that most of the names of files were jumbled into some crazed mess.. not all of them.. maybe half... perhaps because of some unicode or utf issue?

Not sure... but I took the thumbdrive to another machine... pretty much the same thing there.

So I fired up the ole CHKDSK whish is supposed to FIX drive errors.... what does it do? IT ELIMINATED THE ENTIRE FOLDER.

*facepalms*

I do have a backup, although not too recent, and not sure exactly where it is... so I probably did lose some things in that folder (help apps for customers, so no personal data, luckily).

Also wondering if the flashdrive is on its way out... but no integrity errors were found :|

Be careful out there...

Comments

[allaboutweather.livejournal.com]

Get a new flashdrive just to be safe.

If only you lived nearby, I have an extra flashdrive I never used so I would've gave that one to you. :)

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Thanks a bunch... *wingpats!* ... Mostly just trying to round up backups of the files, but yeah.. I've retired that flashdrive too, just in case... it was over 5 yrs old and always traveling around with me...

[allaboutweather.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. :)

5 years? Oh wow. I've used the same one throughout my time in college but that flashdrive's still working properly.

[rustyfox.livejournal.com]

Photorec is a pretty good file recovery tool, whatever chkdsk did, there was already some corruption, but data should still be there in some shape or other. If it is, photorec will probably recover that which is recoverable.

In these "uh-oh, it's all gone wrong!" disk failure scenarios I always dd the entire disk to an image first, before running any tool that'll alter its state forever.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Wowzersw.. thank yooooooo....... I will have to look that one up! One of the machines we have which I was trying to use for recovery has two programs we've had success with (Recuva and Glary Undelete) ... I tried the Glary and it could only locate about 9 files from that folder victimized by deletion. It got late and I did not try the Recuva yet, ... but perhaps I should lookup Photorec next! *hugz*

[hastka.livejournal.com]

This may be restating the obvious, but also bear in mind that flash drives behave differently than "real" drives. The actual bits and bytes are manipulated by a thin bit of control logic that makes it look like you're changing bytes, when really you're accessing a new part of the drive, for example. I just mention this for the sake of saying that using low-level utilities which are not explicitly aware of flash memory stuff may result in unexpected behavior.

Although it sounds more geared toward unix, here's a bit of background for more in-depth reading that I came across via ye olde searche engine: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/How_to_Damage_a_FLASH_Storage_Device

I guess "Flash Translation Layer" was the phrase I was aiming for, above.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

Very interesting reading... thanks for the link! *wingfuzzles your ears* ... Indeed, I know they do act and react differently sometimes, although I am not 100% versed in the varieties, alas.. ;P .... I just took a chance with it, and in retrospect I should have stepped more methodically and patiently like I do with customers' gear... *sigh*

It caught me at a bad time at work, and I was feeling rushed.. and also shocked to see something I had not encountered all these years. I knew the computer I was on did not have full language support, so I had wondered if that was it, which is why I tried it on another one that does. As Rusty (above) said wisely, I should have made a backup then and there before proceeding...

If you should also run across an article entitled "How_to_restore_a_flash_device", do send that along too... ^v^

[hastka.livejournal.com]

Hah yeah, I was hoping the article name was not overly direct. :)

I will keep my eyes open. :) But I think the answer is to see about finding flash-aware utilities. Searching around for "flash drive recovery tools" yielded these for example, but I'm sure that's just the tip of that iceberg.

SSD recovery would probably be another good buzzword that I didn't look into. Again, apologies if I'm restating the obvious here, but sometimes the "extra set of eyes" is of value. :)

Anyway, good luck on resolving it. I somewhat know what you're going through, as I had the microSD card in my phone crash a few months ago, and didn't realize it until the corruption was, well, let's just say widespread. Bye-bye images, music, etc. I had an older backup too... but....

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Yipes. Well, here's to hoping that there is some kind of recovery possible.