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[Oscar]

Hi Everyone, Also Softag if he's reading:
Need help my 4GB Kingston Data Traveller DT 101 11 USB Drive worked fine until today when I tried to plug it in and my WIN 98SE notebook would not read its contents. The drive letter showed OK but it showed no contents when I clicked on Properties. If I tried to "open" or "explore" it would say the drive had no format and asked if I wished to format it. I certainly would not want to format it since I have a LOT of valuable information. So I wanted to test it on other machines, but found that this ocurrs the same with XP systems as well.
I suspect the trouble may have arisen after I may have retreived it too quickly on a public computer.
Have I skipped anything?? How could I fix this drive and save my info??
Thanks,
Oscar
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OSCAR

[SoftStag]

{Topic moved to Helproom}

If it's not reading on an XP system either, then it sounds like it has become corrupt. This could be because it was removed without going the the Safe Removal Process and files were open when it was removed.

You could try running a scandisk on the drive to see if that can repair it, although I imagine without sending it off to an expert data recovery company, you may not be able to get that data back. There are programs out there that you can try, but my experience of this is that they aren't often worth spending money on as they rarely recover much of use.
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"Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft hotline, you'll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone calls in with a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to be user mistakes. I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than bugfixes. The reasons for updates are to present more new features."
-- Bill Gates, on code stability, from Focus Magazine

[Oscar]

Hi Softag:
I took the USB to a tecnician who "opened" it and got some "mumbo jumbo" out of it. How could anyone "translate" perhaps this machine language. Would there be a program which could "extract" my info out of this? Also my contents were 2.5GB but with this procedure I had to provide an additional USB which scarcely exceded 4GB
Any specific suggestions?
Oscar
_________________
OSCAR

[SoftStag]

To be honest, I wouldn't have a clue. This should really go to professionals. Try doing a search for companies that can help like this

There is software out there, but I've never got the free stuff to work, and by the time you've paid for the other software, you could have paid to have a professional do it, and a professional is much more likely to get something meaningful off it!
_________________
"Microsoft programs are generally bug-free. If you visit the Microsoft hotline, you'll literally have to wait weeks if not months until someone calls in with a bug in one of our programs. 99.99% of calls turn out to be user mistakes. I know not a single less irrelevant reason for an update than bugfixes. The reasons for updates are to present more new features."
-- Bill Gates, on code stability, from Focus Magazine