A question......

connacht100

I bought an 8GB USB key about 2 years and saved some stuff on it. I didnt use it in ages and tried to use it gain the other day. The problem is that everytime I plug the USB into the computer a message appears on screen saying that the device has to be formatted. I always click no and eject it.

What I want to know is will formatting the USB mean I will lose all the data on it? and if a USB key is formatted can I save stuff on it again or is it effectively useless?

Many thanks.

mp22

All data will be lost,you should have a working key after.
A later thought if you know some one with a linux setup, plug the key into it,you might get the data off it.

corkcomp

mp22 wrote: »

All data will be lost,you should have a working key after.

yep what he said unfortunately! might be no harm to try it on one other pc before formatting but chances are its in trouble

old_aussie

Hi,

Have you run a registry cleaner program? Like CCleaner

corkcomp

old_aussie wrote: »

Hi,

Have you run a registry cleaner program? Like CCleaner

ha ?

John C

Have you plugged this USB Stick into another computer or laptop?
Ask around if you can plug the stick into the USB Ports of another laptop or computer.
In the event that you resign yourself to formatting the stick. There are some software tools that theoretically "could" recover the files.
My own personal experience is with a freeware tool. I have only used it to recover files deleted from a stick. It recovered about fifty percent I did not use it on a formatted USB Stick.

As I type I have no details of the name of this tool nor of its web address.
One company that specialises in professional data recovery is Convar.

This happened me some years ago. As I back up my data onto an USB hard Disk and onto DVDs I just went ahead with formatting it.

John C

Convar offer pcinspector. http://www.pcinspector.de/default.htm?language=1

Recuva File recovery: http://www.piriform.com/recuva

I am not sure if these programs recover any files after formating an USB Stick.
You can read it for yourself in the help pages.


One last thing. When looking for your post, the title "a question" was not that helpful. Better would have been "USB Stick asks to be formated" or similiar.

dub7_2010

Btw if you have to format just select quick format. This will just erase the file table and not the data so it would be easy to recover all data.
Lots of good programs out there for recovery .