HI all,
I have a Verbatim Store n GO 8gb flash stick that has an error in the partition tables. probably my own fault as I have been a bit demanding of it, having installed several different Linux distros to it as bootable using universal usb creator.(great tool!)

windows was not reading it as a device, but it does come up in disk management as 7.2Gb where I was unable to do anything to it.
Linux reads it as 4.1Kb cdrom when plugged in. Gparted read it as 7.2 gb and I can format partition but couldn`t make it active.

I have run bootice(free) and managed to activate the 7.2 partition. still missing some parts though.


I have run various tools in windows and Linux and was able to see lost/hidden partitions there is 8 of them.(there is 8 but the free version of minitool power data recovery will only let me see 5(disappointing, since they said the ONLY limitation is 1GB file recovery)).


So I guess the real question is does anybody know of a preferably free tool to recover lost partitions with blatant disregard for the unnecessary/unneeded data?

Linux/windows/ISO anything really,

P.S....hmm I wonder if you can still make recovery disk on partition magic? Free version(8-10+ years ago) had every limitation you could think of but if you made a 'recovery disk' which was a 1.44Mb floppy it magically let you do anything!! I don't even own a floppy drive now let alone a disk that works to put in it!!

oh well might try it anyhow will let you know how it goes.

well my download of partition magic(PM) says that PM installer is broken for my pc :{ ?

The only thing that I can say about minitool is that they are good at spamming the internet with false claims for better SEO.

It is rare for partitions to just disappear without reason. Wear and tear is unlikely to damage the partition, unless it is a physical issue with the storage medium. Get a full sector-by-sector image of the thumb drive with ddrescue and then run testdisk against the image to see if you can repair the partition structure on the image file.

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Luke
Recovery Force Data Recovery

AIUI, Windows will only see the first partition on a removable drive. The FAT12 volumes may be related to file fragments containg FAT12 boot sector images, so they may not be real.

I would examine sector 0 with a disc editor such as DMDE (freeware).

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A backup a day keeps DR away.

If I read the OP correctly, the data , thus the partitions, is not of importance, and he wants just to recover the disk.

If that is the case, why not just zero it out with , for example, dd in linux ?

i will look into these options thanks