Aug172011

How can I recover data from a corrupted USB drive folder?

juan asks:

I have a really important information on my USB drive in a folder and I can’t open it. It says is corrupted. What can I do to recover it?


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  • Jeffery Fabish August 18, 2011

    On what operating system? How did it get corrupted? 

    If the firmware is corrupted, try going to start -> run/search and type “cmd.exe” without quotes. A terminal will popup, in there type “chkdsk f LETTER“, replacing “LETTER” with the letter corresponding to your USB drive, again – without quotes.

    Example: chkdsk f F

    You can find the letter by going to start -> My computer and finding your USB key there, a letter will be next to it. This will run a utility to fix the file system (NTFS/FAT32). If that fails, you may want to look into third party USB recovery utilities.

    • Julius_aj07 September 6, 2011

      it says that “Access denied as you do not have sufficient privileges You have to invoke this utility running in elevated mode.”

    • sophal April 26, 2012

      how should i do?

  • Sonny Bass August 18, 2011

    TestDisk which is one of the utilities included on PartedMagic is good for repairing and recovery. http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=partedmagic

  • Aibek August 18, 2011

    Here are a couple of MakeUseOf article that you might find helpful:

    How To Make Corrupt USB Jump Drives Work Again
    http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-make-corrupt-usb-jump-drives-work/

    How to Recover Data from a Corrupt Memory Card or USB Drive
    http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-recover-data-from-a-corrupt-memory-card-or-usb-drive/

  • Venthan4805 August 19, 2011

    if the usb is fully corrupted then u cannot retrieve the data

  • Jesicorebelo October 2, 2011

    i copied a folder containing photos in my usb, then later when i inserted the usb in other computer the photos were missing. plzzz help me

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