Drivers for USB pen drive thing

[MontyVeda]

Yesterday my USB pen drive was working perfectly, today it's not being recognised at all.

Properties say "No drivers are installed for this device." and update / roll back drivers has proved fruitless.

It's an USB 2.0 1gb pendrive.... which I'd quite like to rescue the data from.


Had a look to find drivers for it but i don't really know what i'm looking for.

Any ideas how i can get it working again and hopefully keep hold of the data?

 

[MrJamie]

Easiest option would be trying a different USB port on the same PC, or trying another PC.

Can you find it under device manager and uninstall it or the drivers for it?

Also worth considering if a windows update or anti virus might have upset it.

 

[MontyVeda]

thanks for that... i've tried it in alternative ports and on my laptop, same thing (no drivers installed for this device).... have un-installed it via device manager but still can't get it to install any drivers.

It's definitely the device rather than the hub, as all my other pen-drives and USB connected gismos are working as normal.

do pen drives use generic (not brand specific) drivers? do you know where i could download them from? or what to search for?

 

[MrJamie]

If you get the same error on your desktop and laptop, i'd guess the drive is buggered

Normally when you connect a device to your PC, it tells it what type of device it is so that it knows what drivers to use/how to talk to it, in the case of a video card it can then use basic generic video drivers to get a picture on the screen etc. until you install card specific ones, I think with flash drives they just work off the basic in built windows drivers. So the message would imply that either the windows drivers are corrupted (not likely in 2 machines), or that the stick is buggered and isn't telling the pc what it is. That's pretty much just an educated guess, I don't even own a flash drive

Is it appearing in device manager as 'Unknown Device'?

 

[MontyVeda]

yes it is appearing in device manager as 'unknown device' ... my current plan is to install ubuntu on my laptop and see if i can access the data on the flash drive that way... theory is, Window's can't detect the device but another OS might... I'll just have to cross my fingers... I've already mourned the loss of the data

 

[Kies]

2 different windows machines .... Sounds like the pen is knackered.
You could try and format (fat) to recover the pen,but i fear your data is corrupted

 

[MontyVeda]

yeah, pen is knackered... got nothing via linux either.... never mind, Captain Beefheart has just come on the radio so everything is instantly better... even though i've lost some 150 self penned short stories and essays

 

[MrJamie]

yes it is appearing in device manager as 'unknown device' ... my current plan is to install ubuntu on my laptop and see if i can access the data on the flash drive that way... theory is, Window's can't detect the device but another OS might... I'll just have to cross my fingers... I've already mourned the loss of the data

You could get a small Linux distro which boots from a cd/dvd and see if it will mount the drive on there so you can get the data off if the drive still works. I think something like this http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview and Getting Started.htm If that doesn't work I suspect there are recovery people will be able to get the data off broken drives, for a price of course. It might also be a physical failing that an electronics nerd could fix with a soldering iron, quite extreme lengths though

I'll not lecture you on backups , but flash drives are pretty bad at keeping data reliably IMHO. I'm forever telling my sister that she really shouldn't keep the only copy of all her coursework on an old flash drive for convenience.

 

[MrJamie]

You could get a small Linux distro which boots from a cd/dvd and see if it will mount the drive on there so you can get the data off if the drive still works. I think something like this http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview and Getting Started.htm If that doesn't work I suspect there are recovery people will be able to get the data off broken drives, for a price of course. It might also be a physical failing that an electronics nerd could fix with a soldering iron, quite extreme lengths though

I'll not lecture you on backups , but flash drives are pretty bad at keeping data reliably IMHO. I'm forever telling my sister that she really shouldn't keep the only copy of all her coursework on an old flash drive for convenience.

Edit: oops typed this way before I posted it and you replied. Might be worth trying to get a quote for a recovery service, it might not be that bad.

 

[chqshaitan]

as a last ditch effort you could give spin rite a go on it. I know people have got data back from faulty ssd's and usb pen drives in the past using this. Depends how critical the loss of the data is