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usb flash partition table corrupted
http://forum.hddguru.com/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=12144		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  Zero Alpha [ May 4th, 2009, 0:32 ]
Post subject:  usb flash partition table corrupted
Hello,

Got a 4GB usb flash drive that is now suddenly not able to mount and windows requests to reformat it. WinHEX doesn't find the partition, but rstudio seems to be able to find most data (outside of its original allocation and structure).

What is the best way to try and repair a corrupted partition table on these things?
Author:  Creator [ May 4th, 2009, 0:48 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
No way to do it w/o special equipment.
You should unsolder the memory chip and work with its dump in special software-hardware such as PC3K Flash.
Don't lose your time, just go to pro.
Author:  Zero Alpha [ May 4th, 2009, 1:52 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
Creator wrote:
No way to do it w/o special equipment.
You should unsolder the memory chip and work with its dump in special software-hardware such as PC3K Flash.
Don't lose your time, just go to pro.


Your advice is very bad, either you didn't read the post correctly or you are inexperienced with data recovery.
Author:  Zero Alpha [ May 4th, 2009, 1:55 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
Well sector 0 is really fooked and so far I have tried to manually repair it with no sucess. gpart and testdisk also fail to reconstruct the partition so my best results have been with old faithful rstudio.
Author:  BlackST [ May 4th, 2009, 2:39 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
If you can read and write a Lba on the stick it's ok - logical problem. If not, without special techniques or equipment, is game over for you.
Author:  dick [ May 4th, 2009, 2:49 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
Yes a logical problem is possible but I wouldn't bother trying to fix it. It's a case of fix it today and tomorrow it will be broken again.

I would suggest you get the data back in Rstudio (i'm sure you already have) then just reflow the solder to the memory chip/s and controller. That might even fix it today but as I said...........it could break down at any time.
Replace it and keep the old one for spares.
Author:  Zero Alpha [ May 4th, 2009, 4:13 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
BlackST wrote:
If you can read and write a Lba on the stick it's ok - logical problem. If not, without special techniques or equipment, is game over for you.


True, which makes me think of a good question. I use mhdd to run a scan on hard drives to test them. Whats the equivalent to flash media?
Author:  BlackST [ May 4th, 2009, 8:29 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
If the media is seen at boot on recent PC, MHDD will recognise it. If not, every logical-based SW like the mentioned R-studio and so on will work on Windows : the stick is treated by the OS like a "logical drive" : the fact it doesn't spin it's not a problem, organisation is transparent. Try also Victoria. NOTE : if a cell in the flash is failing, you won't recover it by "erase delays" or "remap" and it can crash too.
Author:  Creator [ May 4th, 2009, 14:23 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
Zero Alpha wrote:
Creator wrote:
No way to do it w/o special equipment.
You should unsolder the memory chip and work with its dump in special software-hardware such as PC3K Flash.
Don't lose your time, just go to pro.


Your advice is very bad, either you didn't read the post correctly or you are inexperienced with data recovery.


Yes my advice is very bad. I just recovered several hundreds of flash storage devices. But sorry I'm newbie. When some "clever" customer comes to me and I see erased/partially erased dump and he tell me that tried to recover using resoldering/something other methods I just say to that "pro": Oh, fuck off!
Trust me, I've had a lot of such customers as you. And if you will go on your home recovery say goodbye to your data.
Author:  Zero Alpha [ May 4th, 2009, 19:51 ]
Post subject:  Re: usb flash partition table corrupted
Creator wrote:
Yes my advice is very bad. I just recovered several hundreds of flash storage devices. But sorry I'm newbie. When some "clever" customer comes to me and I see erased/partially erased dump and he tell me that tried to recover using resoldering/something other methods I just say to that "pro": Oh, fuck off!
Trust me, I've had a lot of such customers as you. And if you will go on your home recovery say goodbye to your data.


LOL... I hope you don't charge much in your dr shop. If you read my post, I told you I have a corrupted partition table. Obviously you don't know what that means because you told me to desolder the memory chip and place it in my pc3k-flash drive. I have already told you that I have recovered the data using rstudio and was trying to repair the partition table. So next time read the post correctly before you make yourself look like an idiot.

Final results: Data recovered with rstudio. Flash drive reformatted. Data copied back.
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