HDD GURU FORUMS

I work at a university helpdesk and Finals week is coming up. We get some desperate students that trust their flash drive too much and loose their important final papers that are due within hours. I hate to tell them that they are screwed and to rewrite the paper, but I feel obligated to humor them and give them false hope by trying.

After watching this presentation (http://youtu.be/EhihfJHIu0I) on you tube. So I am wondering if there is a program to look at the bad sectors/everything in the SSD regardless of the control chip. Assume that its just a bad cell in a block of data within the flash drive. Most of the time the students tell me "it was working yesterday! can't you do anything!?"

so, what should I do? I'm not a forensics nerd that does this for a living. I am a nerd that likes to use his knowledge to help his peers.

Thanks

Death_wish01 wrote:I work at a university helpdesk and Finals week is coming up. We get some desperate students that trust their flash drive too much and loose their important final papers that are due within hours. I hate to tell them that they are screwed and to rewrite the paper, but I feel obligated to humor them and give them false hope by trying.

After watching this presentation (http://youtu.be/EhihfJHIu0I) on you tube. So I am wondering if there is a program to look at the bad sectors/everything in the SSD regardless of the control chip. Assume that its just a bad cell in a block of data within the flash drive. Most of the time the students tell me "it was working yesterday! can't you do anything!?"

so, what should I do? I'm not a forensics nerd that does this for a living. I am a nerd that likes to use his knowledge to help his peers.

Thanks

If you are looking for plug and play tools, there are none. You are better off outsourcing to a lab with the tools.

And just to add one more comment:

Death_wish01 wrote:Assume that its just a bad cell in a block of data within the flash drive.

Why assume that? There are many other possible failure modes, some of which prevent any software-based recovery.

Vulcan wrote:And just to add one more comment:
Why assume that? There are many other possible failure modes, some of which prevent any software-based recovery.

Your right. I can't assume it. But then again, I don't know what to tell theses students. I'll take it as there is none and any other program seller that says it is possible, is lying.

you already told them the truth - they are screwed

@Death_wish01:

Death_wish01 wrote:

Vulcan wrote:And just to add one more comment:
Why assume that? There are many other possible failure modes, some of which prevent any software-based recovery.

Your right. I can't assume it. But then again, I don't know what to tell theses students.

My summary would be - there is no "one size fits all" solution (as Luke said). Each issue needs to be investigated separately. Depending on the exact cause, and hence the exact symptoms, the recovery difficulty ranges from easy, through hard, up to incredibly difficult. Of course during a YouTube demo, a presenter will choose to show problems to which he already knows the answer. Real life isn't like that.

I am curious just how big are these files? If using external drive, there may be copy on host computer depending on software for papers and option setting. Educate on need for backup (does not help now, but for future and most don't listen until disaster, but who knows).

SquaL wrote:Educate on need for backup

Yes, good point, although as you said it won't help people who didn't think about this beforehand and then call the OP for help...

If Dropbox (and similar) are too complicated for the English Literature students (just joking ) then they could be regularly sending themselves a copy of their documents (encrypted if they want) to their own email, as a backup.

Does this ssd/usb drive work ?

Vulcan wrote:

SquaL wrote:Educate on need for backup

Yes, good point, although as you said it won't help people who didn't think about this beforehand and then call the OP for help...

From what I understood on how SSD works. I've informed the head of our department to remind students to back up their files. which reminds me. I have to poke him to get that campus wide E-mail sent.

laptokowiec wrote:Does this ssd/usb drive work ?

In some cases, yes. I can see the SSD/flash drive in my computer, but windows wants to "fix" it by reformatting it. When this happens, I am unable to get around it. :/ In other times, the SSD doesn't even respond. the unresponsive ones I know I can't do anything with. on the other hand, the ones that ask you to reformat the SSD, I have a feeling that I could pull something off of them. I just don't have the tools to do so.

When everyone and their grandmother throwing out free trials of undelete programs, it is hard to tell which programs actually work.

In 99% of cases you can forget the software recovery utilities as the drive has to be fixed first. There are several things that go wrong, some are simple to repair and others rather complicated. If repair is not a viable option then raw data can be read out from the memory chips using a reader and then reassembled into a clear file structure.
You can read more about this in the specific forum flash-memory-f10.html

Death_wish01 wrote:In some cases, yes. I can see the SSD/flash drive in my computer, but windows wants to "fix" it by reformatting it. When this happens, I am unable to get around it. :/ In other times, the SSD doesn't even respond. the unresponsive ones I know I can't do anything with. on the other hand, the ones that ask you to reformat the SSD, I have a feeling that I could pull something off of them. I just don't have the tools to do so.

When everyone and their grandmother throwing out free trials of undelete programs, it is hard to tell which programs actually work.

Check them with DMDE. If it sees any, it should be recoverable.