Recovering data from Flashdrive (RAW)

[Meian]

I have a 2 GB Sandisk flashdrive that I've used for a while. One day, when plugging it in to backup the files on it, windows promptly told me the disc needs to be formatted before being opened. I tried to run the flashdrive on other PCs (mine was win 7, others were win xp) but got the same result.

The flashdisc is recognized under Computer Managment --> Disc Management and lists it as "Healthy (Primary Partition)" with 16 MB RAW.

I have tried running EASEUS Partition Recovery but the flashdrive wasn't detected.
Then I tried running EASEUS Data Recovery Wizard but the flashdrive wasn't found on the data recovery, only the partition recovery. So I tried running it following some instructions I saw online (http://forum.easeus.com/viewtopic.ph...1ec7926677f97c). It gave me no files.

Any ideas? The data is obviously important to me to be breaking my back to recover it ._.

Also, chkdsk doesn't work with RAW and windows says the device is functioning properly.

[Gippo]

The reason it says Raw is because the NTFS file structure has become corrupted. But, For Raw drives, I've used this with limited success. http://www.adrc.com/software/data_recovery_tools/

good luck

[Meian]

No luck it seems :\

[Isiolia]

I have used this program before with success. Dunno if it will work for your particular circumstance, but hey, it's free. That one is designed for camera cards and the like. They have a general Windows version as well that I've had some luck with too.

[bungiefan]

Also, try recovering it from Ubuntu 9. It's read a bunch of drives Windows and Mac OS have insisted are unformatted. Download the live CD and boot from it. Right-click the bar at the top and choose Add to Panel. Add Disk Mounter and mount the partition, and hopefully you'll see the data Windows can't see. Then you mount your hard drive that way and copy the files over, since Linux can now write to NTFS out of the box.

[Bluegartruser741]

My WD 1TB flash drive that held all of my photos, videos and files also experienced the same RAW problems last month.
However, for knowing what the format would cause, I crazily searched the related information to copy off my data on the internet. Fortunately, I finally found a RAW drive recovery freeware that had eventually retrieved all my wanted data back. It was really free and worth trying.

You could download it there: squidoo.com/how-to-make-a-raw-drive-to-work-again-without-losing-data

I hope this freeware also could help others that have the similar recovery problems.
Note:
1. Do not store any new data on this drive in case of the original data overwritten by new data, which can make it gone forever.
2. Do not save the recovered data on the same drive in case of recovery failure.
3. Do not forget to format this drive for retuning its normal use.
4. Do not forget to back up your important data on a separate drive in the future.

[Niya]

Hm, freshly registered user, generic name, no profile details, who digs up a 2 year old thread just to post a link to an unnamed "freeware"... Sounds fishy to me.