To Eject or Not to Eject
October 24, 2017 8:33 AM Subscribe
My computer seems to think I didn't eject my flash drive properly.
I beg to differ. Details inside......
I save all important documents and photos to a flash drive which is constantly plugged into my MacBook Air laptop.
Two weeks ago I was affected by the SF Bay Area wildfires and had to grab what I could and leave my home. Of course my laptop was among the items I took with me. I placed it in a sturdy canvas bag being careful to not disturb the flash drive. Trust me when I say there was not time to fire up the computer and eject it.
I went to save a file to the flash drive a few days ago and was unable to do so, AND there are zero files showing. Ug!
I've tried reinserting it and opening it different ways. Still nothing. When the drive does appear under Devices, it quickly vanishes, and I get the dreaded Disk Not Ejected Properly message. In speaking with friends, they say they never 'eject' their flash drives, they just remove them without issue. I've always been careful to eject any flash drive, but not this time. And the drive was still firmly inserted in the port, so I don't know what could have happened.
And... lastly... I just now got a pop up on my screen that says: The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.... with the options.... Initialize... Ignore or Eject. What happens if I choose Initialize??
I NEED these files!! Can Best Buy or an Apple Genius somehow restore my files??
Help! And, thanks!
I save all important documents and photos to a flash drive which is constantly plugged into my MacBook Air laptop.
Two weeks ago I was affected by the SF Bay Area wildfires and had to grab what I could and leave my home. Of course my laptop was among the items I took with me. I placed it in a sturdy canvas bag being careful to not disturb the flash drive. Trust me when I say there was not time to fire up the computer and eject it.
I went to save a file to the flash drive a few days ago and was unable to do so, AND there are zero files showing. Ug!
I've tried reinserting it and opening it different ways. Still nothing. When the drive does appear under Devices, it quickly vanishes, and I get the dreaded Disk Not Ejected Properly message. In speaking with friends, they say they never 'eject' their flash drives, they just remove them without issue. I've always been careful to eject any flash drive, but not this time. And the drive was still firmly inserted in the port, so I don't know what could have happened.
And... lastly... I just now got a pop up on my screen that says: The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer.... with the options.... Initialize... Ignore or Eject. What happens if I choose Initialize??
I NEED these files!! Can Best Buy or an Apple Genius somehow restore my files??
Help! And, thanks!
If you choose initialize it will try to reformat the drive.
I'd figure you caused physical damage to the drive. Hindsight now, but you should have removed it. "Ejecting" is the prefered method, but not "ejecting" it isn't harmful.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:12 AM on October 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
I'd figure you caused physical damage to the drive. Hindsight now, but you should have removed it. "Ejecting" is the prefered method, but not "ejecting" it isn't harmful.
posted by humboldt32 at 9:12 AM on October 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
The data is probably still there. Don't panic.
Do not do anything further with the drive before you back it up using a bit for bit copy technique. Doing anything (intentionally or inadvertently) that writes to it can cause data loss.
You want a bit for bit disk image of the drive to have as a back up if the attempts to recover the files fail. You can do this from the command line using dd. Be EXTREMELY careful, as a typo in that command will permanently wipe your drive. A safer alternative (that I've not use so can't attest to) is dd-gui. If you're not confident you can make the image safely, bribe a computer geek friend or pay a professional. Having that backup means that if you take it to someone that accidentally corrupts the data, you'll have a reasonably good chance of still being able to recover it.
And I don't want to kick you while you're down, but please take the time to set up a better storage system than a flash drive. Even at the best of times, they can fail suddenly and in ways that are very expensive to do recovery on.
posted by Candleman at 10:20 AM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
Do not do anything further with the drive before you back it up using a bit for bit copy technique. Doing anything (intentionally or inadvertently) that writes to it can cause data loss.
You want a bit for bit disk image of the drive to have as a back up if the attempts to recover the files fail. You can do this from the command line using dd. Be EXTREMELY careful, as a typo in that command will permanently wipe your drive. A safer alternative (that I've not use so can't attest to) is dd-gui. If you're not confident you can make the image safely, bribe a computer geek friend or pay a professional. Having that backup means that if you take it to someone that accidentally corrupts the data, you'll have a reasonably good chance of still being able to recover it.
And I don't want to kick you while you're down, but please take the time to set up a better storage system than a flash drive. Even at the best of times, they can fail suddenly and in ways that are very expensive to do recovery on.
posted by Candleman at 10:20 AM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]
My go-to tool for drives that have become corrupted is Prosoft Data Rescue. It's not free, but it's very very good at what it does, which is scan your media, identify possible files from the bits that finds, and save them out to another drive.
They have a free downloadable demo which will scan your drive and show you what it finds. I think it might let you download one file? It's been a long time since I've used the demo.
https://www.prosofteng.com/data-recovery-software/
posted by Wilbefort at 11:18 AM on October 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
They have a free downloadable demo which will scan your drive and show you what it finds. I think it might let you download one file? It's been a long time since I've used the demo.
https://www.prosofteng.com/data-recovery-software/
posted by Wilbefort at 11:18 AM on October 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
seconding dd to make a copy of the drive. Only work from the clone, or even a clone of the clone, so you can restart from the fresh clone as often as you want, and try different things without stressing that you've got one shot to get it right.
From there I'd to a chkdsk (a DOS/Windows program), not sure how to accomplish that on OSX. Appears to be 'Disk Utils', but note that options are important; you don't want the the chains of sectors returned to the available pool, you want them named as temporary files you can then attempt to recover.
Which program created the files? Some are better at recovering their own files.
posted by cyclicker at 11:18 AM on October 24, 2017
From there I'd to a chkdsk (a DOS/Windows program), not sure how to accomplish that on OSX. Appears to be 'Disk Utils', but note that options are important; you don't want the the chains of sectors returned to the available pool, you want them named as temporary files you can then attempt to recover.
Which program created the files? Some are better at recovering their own files.
posted by cyclicker at 11:18 AM on October 24, 2017
When my MB Air is turned off (or the battery dies) with the flash drive still plugged in, that seems to count as "ejecting improperly."
If I put it to sleep by closing the cover, that seems to be excused as "not ejecting" and the flash drive is still functioning when I wake it up again.
I would suppose that you turned the computer off at some point before you left the house, or the battery died while you were in transit.
posted by JimN2TAW at 1:03 PM on October 24, 2017
If I put it to sleep by closing the cover, that seems to be excused as "not ejecting" and the flash drive is still functioning when I wake it up again.
I would suppose that you turned the computer off at some point before you left the house, or the battery died while you were in transit.
posted by JimN2TAW at 1:03 PM on October 24, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
If you do the Initialize option, it will try to format the disk, erasing anything that's on there in the process, and with no guarantees that it will correctly initialize, you'll be in just as terrible shape.
If you have another Mac that you can access, possibly try it in there in case something is up with your computer. If it does the same stuff in another computer, it's more than likely corrupted.
You might try downloading PhotoRec (17.0, Mac OS X Intel), but I have only used the Windows version, not the Mac one, and have no idea how well the Mac version works. Windows version has saved me before though.
If that doesn't work, I won't say all is lost, as much as I will say if it's that important, you may have to pay up.
Best Buy has a data recovery solution, never used it, but they wouldn't be able to do it right there in store, and with the level of corruption you speak of, it's gonna be a minimum of Level 2A from their chart.
Personally, if the files are that important, I would call up DriveSavers, as they're made for this, it's all they do. Prices will not be cheap, but they've got the right tools to do it, and "No Data, No Charge" is their deal.
Please, please please please (x1000) make sure that any data that's important enough to keep is saved at least two places, and those two places need to be totally separate from each other. With Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and the myriad other online cloud solutions, make sure a copy is in one of them, a copy is local on a laptop, desktop or phone, and a copy is on removable media of some sort. If you only have one copy and that copy burns up in a fire, then it's like you never had it at all.
posted by deezil at 8:58 AM on October 24, 2017 [2 favorites]