JumpDrive Help

October 10, 2005 11:15 AM

I own one of these that is malfunctioning. Windows won't recognize it and I have some semi-important things on it. Does anyone know of a way to get the data off of it?
posted by aburd to computers & internet (9 comments total)

It might be obvious but try it in a different computer. And then I'd also give it a try on a Mac. As long as its not stuffed totally full you might be able to extract your data and mail it to yourself.

There are also some drive utilities you might use but the only ones I know about are on the Mac.

Good luck.
posted by fenriq at 11:22 AM on October 10, 2005

I think I have access to a Mac. What are the drive utilities I could use? Are they expensive?
posted by aburd at 11:30 AM on October 10, 2005

No, they are included in the OS. Look in the Utilities folder inside the Applications folder (assuming the Mac is running OS X). But try to see if the Mac can access the thumbdrive without the utility apps, sometimes a different machine can get it to work.

And you just reminded me to back up all the data on my portable drive.
posted by fenriq at 11:44 AM on October 10, 2005

Never rely on these things as primary storage. They're fine as an emergency backup, but synchronise them often -- that limits how much you can lose.

Also: Don't give up after trying the Mac. Try a different flavor of Windows, and try just a different Windows PC.

Also, just to make sure you've done the simplest and most basic things: Make sure you try it on your computer after you do a complete reboot. Any consumer OS will get confused after it's been running for a few weeks.
posted by lodurr at 12:33 PM on October 10, 2005

I had a Lexar Jumpdrive pro that started acting flaky a while back and one of the computers at work would not read it ("device has malfunctioned...") but every other computer would. Then a couple weeks ago more computers stopped reading it, but a few still could so I was able to burn the contents to CD. My brand new home PC that worked the day before would now not read it. I was stumped. Then I said WTF and plugged it into my HP Photosmart 8200 printer, and through that it was identified and read perfectly normally. My experience has been that the Lexars are unreliable. I've had better results with the SanDisks and I now carry a 1GB micro on my key chain. Long story made short: try other PCs/Macs until one reads it and burn the contents to a CD. Then ditch it.
posted by AstroGuy at 1:17 PM on October 10, 2005

I often find that when mine isn't recognized, it's because it has the same drive letter as a current drive on the PC I'm using it with. I've since assigned it the letter Q, which rarely causes conflict.
posted by forallmankind at 2:05 PM on October 10, 2005

I answered this one earlier this year.

I had a similar problem. It is listed as drive G, but the machine is already using drive G. You need to rename the USB drive.

Control Panel: Administrative Tools: Computer Management: Disk Management: find the USB drive and rename it.
posted by Classic Diner at 3:36 PM on October 10, 2005

Don't know if this is relevant to the Lexar drive or not, but I've recently found out that an Apple iPod Shuffle craps out if the computer's 5V power supply is marginal (the computer in question was only putting out 4.65-4.7V). We worked around it by using a powered USB hub.
posted by flabdablet at 7:29 PM on October 10, 2005

If you have access to a Linux Guru, perhaps this article may be of assistance:

How a Corrupted USB Drive was saved by GNU/Linux
posted by de void at 6:56 AM on October 11, 2005