Yesterday I plastered myself to the love seat in front of the TV, tuning into HGTV for background noise, parked my laptop on my lap, and over the course of the day tapped out 15 single spaced pages of the manuscript I've had brewing in my head for at least 8 month.
I've learned over the years to back up everything I write, lest something really bad happen. So as I wrote, I saved to a thumb drive, and when I was done for the day I grabbed it and headed back for the desktop computer so that I could save to that, too.
But I plugged it into the computer...and nothing. The desktop system didn't recognize it on any USB port, and the little green indicator light on the drive didn't come on.
After a few choice words, I went back to the laptop to save it to the hard drive there. But no...it no longer recognized it as a drive, either.
I didn't realize thumb drives (or flash drives it you will) could die. I figured with no moving parts that I know of, my data was safe.
But now I have the beginning of a book stuck on one, along with God knows what else. I've saved a lot to that drive...and it looks like it'll be stuck there forever. Dammit.
11 comments:
Take it to a computer shop and see if they can retrieve it. I have never had one 'die'.
Oh dear Thumper. I have never heard of one to die either. Maybe something in the connection is off. Try another USB port too.
Oh, honey.
I'm so sorry.
I hope someone really computer-smart can help you.
Actually, any drive can "die", but I hope that you can find someone computer savvy to help you get your info off that thumb drive.
The info should be retrievable...a computer guru might be able to do it!
I've never had one die but I've heard that they can. I use one all the time and I worry about that happening.
Hope someone can come up with a plan to extract that info. Then what? What will you do to back up now?
I dropped my laptop while one was in its port. I had 6 months of advertising files for a client and had rewrite those ads. But somebody told me about a place that you can send the flash drive to and for about $25 they will get all the files off the flash drive for you and put them on a disk.
I cant find the site right now, I'll keep you posted if I do.
And yes, I killed the laptop too that day, still havnt gotten either of them fixed, its been 4 months.
OMG. I am so sorry about that, but I feel sure that there is someone/some company that can extract the data for you! Good luck!
Did you save to the hard drive? If so, email it to yourself (as an attachment) and then save on the desktop computer. Sorry if I misunderstood, but I can't imagine that you only saved it on the removable flash drive and not to the hard drive of the computer you were working from.
I'm not always the brightest bulb in the package...
Flash drives can die. They have a fairly large number of "Write cycles", but eventually, they will all die. As others have said, have you're friendly neighborhood nerd look at it, but if it's truly dead, there's still a chance you can recover the data. Keep in mind, it's not cheap, but check a service like OnTrack. http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/mobile-device-recovery/
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