Question Windows 7 Flash Drive suddenly shows zero date need to recover files

[soloalpinist]

Hello!
I'm on a Windows 7 PC. I have a USB Flashdrive that is old... crappy... but with files I need. I plugged it in and got the "blah blah want to scan to fix" message but ignored it as I thought scanning and fixing might delete files.
Now the FlashDrive shows up as "G" Drive... but says zero files. I tried running CHKDISK but I get the message "can't access drive" I've tried a few recovery programs... none can access the drive.

Is there any way to recover the files off this Flashdrive?

 

[Math Geek]

have you tried it on any other pc's?

sometimes one pc will somehow work when another does not. rare but it happens.

sounds like the usb drive just died on you and most likely you won't be able to access it. if its important data, hopefully you have it backed up elsewhere as well.

anything of importance should be in at least 3 places with one being offsite somewhere. i know it's worthless info at the moment, but if its only in this one place, you might be learning a very hard lesson about backing up important stuff.

 

[USAFRet]

anything of importance should be in at least 3 places with one being offsite somewhere. i know it's worthless info at the moment, but if its only in this one place, you might be learning a very hard lesson about backing up important stuff.

QFT

 

[DSzymborski]

Really not a whole lot you can do. You can try another PC as recommended. You can see if something like Recuva can read the drive. Other than that, not much you can do other than send it off to a competent drive recovery lab and hope for the best. This will be expensive, of course, potentially into four figures.

Unfortunately, the only good way to recover lost data is to protect it in the first place. The most important question may be what you do from here so that you don't lose your files *again*. Important data is not data that you have only stored on one "old crappy" thumb drive. Multiple backups in multiple places is a basic part of PC upkeep and neglecting it can be very dangerous.