I have a double handful of USB flash drives left over from closing my biz.
They contain all sorts of utilities, bug killers, disk cloners, and client data.
Started dealing with all them with a W10 PC.
Several were different Distros that Windows didn’t like, but some partitioning tools took care of that. After telling Windows, that no - I didn’t want to reformat 4 partitions Etc.
But there were 5 or so that Windows didn’t even recognize as being plugged in.
Sure one bad drive - but 5? If Windows can’t find it the various Win based tools are unless. No Win plug in sound, no device that I could find.
WTF?
Boot a live Mint off a flash drive in an old laptop. Fire up gparted and there they were.
All but one was an easy fix.
One had something odd going on and would not give me the option to unmount.
Had to fuss with MBR and do a reboot - as recommended by gparted BTW- and all was well.
I know there are tiny gparted utils, but Mint was handy.
All the problem children then worked fine in Widows.
Just a little tale in case you run into something like this.
All the Best
Jeff
Surprised Windows doesn’t recognize those. I too sold my business and windows server on the company computers went bye-bye. I too have Linux mint at home on an old hand crank computer (Dell optiplex 7010 I bought for $200 used and added a 2 TB SSD drive), and love it. Thanks for the heads up.
Hmm…
I have some flash drives that Windows won’t recognize.
I just figured that they were “dead”, but I don’t use Linux, so this fix doesn’t work for me unless I decide to start using Linux.
Back when I was in college I made a gparted bootable CD in case I ever needed it. Nowadays it is hard to even imagine using a bootable CD for anything lol. I might still have the CD though
By the way, totally off-topic, but on another forum a moderator disapproved of me trying to help out another user because the subject was off-topic.
I didn’t actually get in trouble, but if I would have kept up conversation, I probably would have.
I’m glad that on BLF I don’t get in trouble for posting off-topic posts (though I need to try harder on other forums to stay on-topic.)
When I started using Slax on my home personal computer, Slax was on a 1 megabyte bootable usb flash drive. I was amazed that an operating system could fit on a bootable USB flash drive.
Yep, for me it was the Commodore 64 with 64KiB of memory, but only 38KiB of RAM, and 170KiB floppy disks.
It was pretty cool in the early 1980s (though I used my C64 into the 90s.)
I would - At least after being use for non critical stuff for a while. All are name brand and not counterfeits. Lexars, Sandisks, Etc.
All worked at their assigned tasks for years.
It was so odd that the first PC didn’t see them.
Seems unlikely that I could have plugged them in poorly. Never had that happen unless the thing actually went bad.
All are older USB2 4gb-16gb, one may have been a 32.
So no big loss if I have to toss them.
RC, this place is WAY more friendly than - err - some others…
Ha! Have one sitting in the garage next to an old SuperMicro 6 bay server.
Fate of both yet to be determined.
The Dell was a left behind. A client actually tossed it out a door down the driveway.
I never had to use a hammer and pry-bar to open a case before.
Did a data rescue for him.
Had one intermittently bad stick of RAM. Hence the toss.
Works like a champ now with an SSD and the OEM i7 in it.
Thing I like about Dells is the easy to access drivers / manuals. And support for most Linux Distros.
Now that there are 24pin to Dell MB adapters for power supplies, life can go on with power hungry add-ons.
RC, you can install a live Mint distro on a USB stick.
Boot from the stick and choose try Mint - or something to that effect.
It is the first choice in the boot menu option.
Not the - Install Mint - option.
Mint is easy for Windows folk to adapt to.
Then the OS runs completely from the flash drive leaving the internal drive alone.
Just be sure when messing with the file manager or partition editor that it points to the drive you want to mess with.
A great way to play with Linux with dedicating a computer to it.
All the Best,
Jeff
The Xfce Edition is the lite version that I use. Cinnamon if you have better hardware - also supports more WiFi hardware…
Don’t be in too much of a hurry, give the OS a bit of time since it is running off the USB stick. USB3 sticks are peppier.
Also need something to make a bootable USB stick.
I use RUFUS the portable version. No need to install it.
At the risk of becoming Official Linux Support Enby: ddrescue is an incredibly good tool for getting data off failing drives, probably the best tool available to someone who doesn’t work for a data recovery lab, but better for optical media or HDDs than SSDs, and if data is truly critical I’d still rather use a professional.
I’ve luckily never had to use DriveSavers but hear nothing but great things about them, excluding the price. Never hurts to have a bootable USB loaded up with Kali. Might not need all the associated tools, but there’s a lot of good stuff available if you ever needed it.
I still remember keeping a CD of knoppix around for repairing issues with Windows partitions or extracting files as needed.
I used to be an affiliate for them. They are good but be prepared to get out the BIG checkbook. I only recommended them after conventional tools would not work. Or I could hear physical damage.
I used R-Studio, a paid for software package. Very comprehensive.
Usually clone the drive sector by sector then work off the clone.
A local oil Co. had their RAID server crap the bed. Naturally the backups didn’t work.
The admin took the server to them on the corporate jet.
Two days after she came back with data intact.
No way was I going to stick my fingers into a corrupted RAID with a zillion bucks worth of data on it.
That’s the deal with data recovery for big bucks data. Often there is a lawyer waiting in the wings.
All the Best,
Jeff
Noted, thanks. I think it would depend on whether the problem is a failed chip in the USB stick that prevents it from from being enumerated in /dev/ (which would probably require physical rescue methods), or a problem at the level of its filesystem that prevents it from getting mounted.
It’s does still work for failing chips too. When it hits a read error, it keeps scanning until it gets good reads again, while keeping a map of the failed addressed (persisted to a file), then once it has read the entire disk, it goes back and keeps retrying the failed parts until one succeeds, then it keeps trying on the others. Intended to get maximum lifespan out of a working but marginal drive with maximal data recovery. Was designed back in the days of floppies/tape/HDDs being the main use case, but the concept is still valid for solid state too.
As always with any data recovery past “accidentally deleted, didn’t overwrite” (trivial difficulty), it’s a question of how much you value the data vs the potential cost of recovery and its chance of success.
Used to put HDs on top of a cool-pack if I thought there was a board problem.
Worked - sometimes - kept the board cool during the long reads.
Did not put the whole drive in the freezer like some suggested in the old days.
Many 5.25 inch Seagate HDDs had the Seagate stick. The heads would stick to the platter.
A sharp rap with a plastic screwdriver handle, at power up, would often free it up.
The look on clients faces was priceless.
All the Best,
Jeff
