Question 32 GB Flash drive showing as 64MB RAW

[jahmil212]

Ran into an issue with a Sandisk 32GB Karona drive. Wife unplugged the drive from the computer without ejecting first and now on any computer that I insert the drive it returns the msg that it needs to be formatted. When I look in Disk Management, the drive is showing a total size of 64 MB. Attempted to use TestDisk and PhotoRec but both return that there is no partition available on the disk. I have made a .dd and .img backup of the corrupted drive, but have run out of ideas on how to get to the data or get the drive back to it's allocated size so that I can attempt to run data recovery SW.

What I have tried:

1. Chkdsk - Cannot run on RAW
2. Testdisk - Cannot find any partition to restore
3. Phototrec - Cannot find any partition / files
4. Diskpart - Does not show the drive as 32 GB capacity, shows as 64 MB
5. Write .img backup of drive to another USB (same Size) and re-format (Quick) - Repeat 2 + 3 with no files found

 

[rgd1101]

don't put important data only on flash drive. always have backup.
you could try data recovery service, but possible that data is gone.

 

[fzabkar]

I think this is a symptom of a firmware problem. When the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) becomes corrupt, or the drive runs out of spare blocks, the firmware panics and goes into safe mode or read-only mode. If you examine the IMG file with a hex editor (eg HxD, freeware), I think you will find garbage data.

 

[jahmil212]

I think this is a symptom of a firmware problem. When the Flash Translation Layer (FTL) becomes corrupt, or the drive runs out of spare blocks, the firmware panics and goes into safe mode or read-only mode. If you examine the IMG file with a hex editor (eg HxD, freeware), I think you will find garbage data.

Thank you for the suggestion! When I inspect the .img file in the Hex Editor every entry in the table is 00 at all offsets.

 

[fzabkar]

It does look like your drive is beyond DIY recovery.