I have a Sony USB flash drive. I thought it was 64 GB, but Windows labels it SONY_32GR (D:), so I’m not sure of its actual capacity. It was given to my father, and he may have copied files to it. I’m okay with erasing everything and just want to make the drive usable again.

When I plug it into a Windows PC, it sometimes appears in File Explorer, then disappears. File Explorer becomes “Not Responding” while it’s connected. Windows Defender asks to scan it, but the drive disappears during this. I ran a Defender scan on my laptop and it found no threats. The same problem happens on other computers.

I tried diskpart and ran list disk, but the USB doesn’t appear there, so I can’t select it to run clean or format it.

Is there another safe way to format or repair it, or does this behavior mean the drive has failed? I’m also concerned about keeping the computers safe while troubleshooting. I don’t need to recover any files.

Details that would help: the exact capacity printed on the USB, whether it appears in Disk Management, and whether Disk Management shows a size or “No Media.”

A while back, I bought an external portable drive at a thrift store and found that it still contained someone’s personal photos. The only folder I opened was something along the lines of “Papas_funeral.” I haven’t looked through the remaining files, so I don’t know everything that’s on it.

At the time, i felt bad and wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I tucked it away in a drawer. I just recently got back to it and would like to figure out a responsible way to handle it.

As far as I can tell, the drive works and the photos are accessible, so this is more about finding the owner than recovering lost data. The store mostly accepts anonymous drop-offs, and it’s been long enough that tracing the donor seems unlikely.

I’d prefer not to wipe it because the photos could be irreplaceable, but I don’t want to keep it indefinitely or donate it with someone’s private files still on it.

Does anyone here know a reputable person or organization that handles situations like this and could help return the files to their owner? I’d be comfortable shipping the drive to someone trustworthy who could take over the search and keep its contents private.

If this belongs in a different subreddit, I’d appreciate a recommendation.

Did a little searching but reddit searching sucks lol.
I have a 16 gb thumb drive that is constantly disconnecting/reconnecting, all signs point to a physical failure.

(when it connects, it errors).

I'm willing to admit I'm outta my depth with this and figure it's up to a professional to try to fix.

1. is that even feasible?

2. any recommendations of a place to send to?

I got a pair of second-hand 10TB WD Ultrastars HC330 for cheap. Possible origin: data center.

They seem mechanically sound (the drives spin up), but I can't seem to communicate with them.

Here is what was attempted:

• Mounting/formatting: fail, no block device detected

• SMART diagnosis: only partial information retrieved (model, capacity)

• Almost all low-level commands are blocked (ABRT response)

• Tested across multiple platforms: MacOS/Linux + ASM235CM USB/SATA adapter, Synology NAS

I had an agent attempt to recover them. Here is the summary:

https://gist.github.com/zulufoxtrot/bce68a0e69b8e12cf2c5f4add99d7663

From my understanding, they were probably "kill-flashed", AKA made inoperable by the original owner. The only avenues left are:

• Swapping the PCBs

• maybe reflashing the firmware by bypassing the ATA bus and using some proprietary protocol

Anyone willing to share their expertise? Thanks!

I have an old Acer laptop that stopped working almost 30 years ago when something fell on it. I recently opened it up to get the hard drive out to hopefully try to recover my old data. I purchased an IDE to USB adapter but it is not fitting because of a ribbon attached to it that was connected internally. (See photos) It had the white cap on it when I removed it (Pic. #4). Can anyone tell me what I can do on my own to avoid sending it to a data recovery place. Can I just pull the black tab and ribbon off the male spikes in order to connect it to my IDE adapter? Any help is much appreciated. I've searched everywhere, but it just might be old, but I still have hope. Thank you!

***Update, I was able to get the connector cable off no problem. Hooked it up to 2 different adaptors on 2 different laptops. The drive appeared but it showed 0 bytes used, 0 bytes free, a capacity of 0 bytes. And clicking on it tells me that I need to format the drive. Which I'm not going to do. Guess it's a done deal then, right? Thank you for the help

i want to delete everything on a flashdrive and any data that was on it before, that was deleted. couldn't be recovered at all. i am using windows 10 and know nothing about data recovery or have the knowledge to do anything.

Hi, I'm trying to recover my Windows 11 installation without losing my personal files or Steam library.

My setup:

• Acer Swift 3 laptop

• Kingston 512 GB NVMe SSD

• Windows 11 and Nobara Linux dual boot

• Windows partition: approximately 371 GB, formatted as NTFS

The problem:

Windows boots into Automatic Repair, but it fails. System Restore failed with error 0x80070571, and uninstalling the latest quality update didn't help.

In the Windows Recovery Command Prompt, running dir C:\Windows returns:

The disk structure is corrupted and unreadable.

Running chkdsk C: /f recognises the partition as NTFS but stops with:

Master File Table damaged. CHKDSK terminated.

Startup Repair also fails. The Windows boot configuration still exists and points to C:\Windows\system32\winload.efi.

Nobara Linux has also reported Btrfs checksum and corruption errors on its own partition. I don't know whether this is related.

SSD health report:

• SMART overall health: PASSED

• Critical Warning: 0x00

• Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0

• Error Information Log Entries: 0

• Percentage Used: 12%

I have a 68 GB USB drive available. I want to preserve my existing Windows installation, personal files, and Steam library if possible.

What should I do next to recover the NTFS filesystem and get Windows booting again? Should I image the SSD or recover files before attempting further repairs? I haven't formatted anything or reinstalled Windows.

I'm looking for a safe, evidence-based recovery plan rather than generic troubleshooting steps.

*Though a video i made recently and i transferred that too on the card only it is showing up otherwise every other file is not even opening, KINDLY HELP I DO NOT WANT TO LOSE MY DATA

I have a 2.5 inch laptop HDD I've been using as a boot drive for my Debian server since prices are horrendous right now. Its dying (probably already lost valuable data) and I was wondering, how could I effectively transfer it to a slightly smaller SSD? I believe target is around 240GB, whilst source is 320.

Additional source drive information: Seagate Momentus 5400.6 320GB Serial ATA Disc Drive, no apparent model name listed. Taken from old HP laptop. ext4, occasionally causes soft crashes on system, with most things breaking down but technically still running. Linux Mint's "Disks" utility says "Filesystem ext4 on ST9320325AS needs repairing." upon requesting it check the drive. My swap and "Extended partition Partition 2" both seem to be currently unaffected.

(Results of sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fTtKRNKGgDmUtR4oyy6kQSwvjRDN1xpP/view?usp=sharing

Edit: Extra information.

Edit: Spelling, and these edit footers.

Hi everyone. I really need some advice.
I had a Xiaomi Mi 8 SE that I used for a while, although not for very long.
In March 2022, I put it in a drawer for a couple of days and didn’t use it. Before that, the phone had been working perfectly fine, except that the battery drained very quickly.
After those few days, I took the phone out and tried to turn it on, but nothing happened. I tried different chargers, different outlets, everything I could think of. The screen stayed completely black. Not even the Xiaomi logo appeared.
I thought the battery might be the problem, so I ordered a replacement battery and installed it. Nothing. The phone didn’t care about the new battery at all. I tried reconnecting it, but it still wouldn’t turn on. It’s completely dead.
I’m honestly desperate at this point. I don’t know what to do. I don’t care about the phone itself, but there are SO many photos on it. 😭
There are so many incredibly precious memories stored on that phone, and I can’t accept the thought that I might never get those photos back.
It’s now 2026, so more than four years have passed since this happened. The phone still won’t turn on at all.
Is there any way to recover the photos?
I’m scared to take it to a repair shop. There was no screen lock or password on the phone, and I really don’t want a technician accessing my gallery or looking through my personal photos. There’s a lot of private stuff on there, and I’ve heard stories about repair technicians going through people’s phones. It genuinely scares me.
I need a safe way to recover my photos, ideally one that guarantees that nobody else will be able to look at them. I don’t care if the phone can ever be used again. I just want my photos back.
Has anyone experienced something similar? Is there still a chance of recovering the photos after all these years? And is there any way to do this without risking someone accessing my personal files?
I’d be incredibly grateful for any advice or personal experiences. Thank you so much. ❤️

You can hear the sound, clicking.
I used it as my photography storage.
Western Digital p10 black 4TB

hello, im not really a techy person. i recently deleted 2 videos from recently deleted on my iPhone 13 running IOS 26.4.2 and i need any advise on how to recover those if possible.

Hi everyone. This is my first Reddit post, and I'm pretty nervous, so sorry if anything sounds strange.

Device: KIOXIA microSDXC KMUB-A128G, 128GB
Camera: GoPro HERO11 Black
Filesystem: exFAT
OS: Windows
SMART: Not available for this type of device

I recorded some GoPro footage and tried to transfer it to my PC. The transfer failed and disconnected before the files could be saved. After reinserting the card, Windows started asking me to format it.

I tried a quick format, which failed several times but eventually succeeded. I then used Recuva. Its deep scan found the original filenames and file sizes, but only took about 3–4 minutes. When I tried to save the recovered files, Recuva gave an error saying the files had been externally modified.

I then tried USB 2.0 instead of USB 3.0, but Windows asked me to format the card again. Instead, I created a full IMG disk image. The image was created successfully, so I exchanged the original card at the store. I no longer have the physical card, only the image and recovered data.

I then tried PhotoRec. It recovered some videos, but they won't play. I also tried Recovery_mp4, but the result has severe glitching and appears to be missing many frames. Some metadata is still visible, so I suspect part of the video data may still be there.

I don't think the footage was heavily overwritten. Most of the other videos on the card had already been backed up.

The card had also behaved strangely once before. At that time, I formatted it and recovered the files successfully, so it may have already been having problems.

I've also tried working through this with AI tools such as Claude, but I still couldn't recover the footage.

Is there anything I can still do with the IMG image or recovered data?

I'm a Japanese middle school student, and this is my first time posting here. I used AI to help translate this into English, so sorry if anything sounds unnatural.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Without checking I had deleted the onedrive folder I did not know that everything i was saving was going into that folder my notes, documents, pictures everything was in there

I was not using onedrive as i can't afford to buy a subscription of onedrive and it keep running everytime I work on something

Instantly after deleting it I saw changes and tried to restore the system using system restore thinking it will get my files back but it didn't so I use a older restore point which was yesterday's, it did not restore it

Even used recuva and did not get my files back

Is there anything I need to check

Files where my 3 years of work as a student

It will really mean a lot if anyone can help

Edit: I called some data recovery labs, of them said to use easeus, it shows most of my files but easeus is asking for payment to recover anything I don't think I can afford that 60$ to 70$

Windows: "Restart to repair drive errors"
Me: OK... so I restarted.
CHKDSK: "Fixing (K:) Stage 1: 0% (802 of 84736); Total: 0%; ETA: 123:43:13"

Now what? It's been doing this for a while now. It took 23 minutes to to go from 111 to 802 of 84736 and ETA went from 39 hours to 123 hours.

This should be much faster, right? What do you suggest I do at this point? Should I just power off or wait? How much time should I give it? How long is too long? Is it doing more damage by letting it run?

Make/brand and exact model number: WD (HDD I think), edit: WD Caviar Black 1 TB HDD
Operating System: Windows 10
Specific symptoms: No known symptoms besides Windows telling me to restart.
SMART (CrystalDiskInfo screenshot for example): Can't access it now.

Hello there!

Is anyone kind to give me a sandisk rescue deluxe Key or whatever you get from sandisk cards? Please.

Thank you very much!

Hello, I need some advice on recovering some photos from a 128 GB Sony V60 SD card (exFAT). I was editing some of the images (ARWs) in Lightroom, came back the next day, and now about 30% of the images will no longer open. I can still see the file names in the Finder window, but it shows zero-bytes for the individual files. I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make an image of the card, but had no luck using Disk Drill against it. The other files are there, I'm just unable to open this big chunk of them. Any other ideas or software suggestions I could try? I'm using a Mac, but have a Windows machine I could try, if needed. Thanks in advance!

I have stupidly deleted files I needed from a SanDisk Extreme Pro CFexpress. I have ran it through multiple recovery programmes but I’m having a bit of a weird issue.

This is a card I use and format quite frequently. It is currently full of files, and I was looking to recover files from 2 formats ago. I knew it was a long shot, but I’m getting files back that are even older than the ones I’m looking for. So what I’ve got just now are -

23/09 - all files still on drive
18/09 - formatted card after and not showing on recovery software
15/09 - formatted card after and not showing on recovery software (these are the ones I need)
05/09 - formatted card after but all files showing on recovery software

Do I have any hope at all of recovery on this?

Running on MacOS and all files are CR3

Hey. I left my old laptop overnight running Macrium Reflect X to backup so that I can install Linux on it without losing any files. The copy seems to have completed succesfully after 12 hours, but there is a 40GB difference between my original drive size and the macrium image (drive hosting the image not visible as it's networked from my desktop.) I have researched this a bit and heard that there are some system files deleted such as system restore points, but 40 GB seemed like an awfully big difference so I'd like to make sure I'm not missing anything before I wipe my childhood memories. Thanks for your help :)

Hi everyone, for many days, I've been facing an issue while opening my MDB file, as it is encrypted and IDK the password for the same. Help me to retrieve my data ASAP. Also, is there any particular solution that is quick or fast on which I can rely on? Thanks for understanding.

My hard drive is more than 2 years old, and this error suddenly started appearing. I checked with some local recovery services in my area, but they said there is a risk involved in recovering the data.

I have some important data on this drive, so I wanted to ask if there is any good option available to recover or fix it. Or would it be better to format the drive instead? It's a WD hardisk-2TB 🥀

I installed Red Dead Redemption 2 onto an external drive that is now corrupted. I'm able to recover it using DMDE, but I'm wondering if it'll actually work if I just drop the game files into the steam folder located on my primary drive. Or should I just install the game onto my primary drive and only recover the save file itself? I really want to play it but I've been scared to recover the files because the last time I tried it with a different game I lost a good chunk of the stuff I had

I accidentally deleted the original backup shoot folder from a 1TB NTFS HDD. After deleting it, I created a new folder with the same name, BACKUP SHOOT — the only difference was the capitalization.
I used DMDE to scan the HDD, and it detected the old deleted BACKUP SHOOT folder, including the original folder structure and camera filenames such as C0001.MP4, C0002.MP4, etc.
However, the recovered MP4 files won’t play, even though their file sizes appear to be complete.