Nope. Second download--same result here.

johnnyjt,

When you get the message "Need to Format Drive to Use It" you must cancel it. It is a warning that Explorer can't recognize the file system on the drive.

Start the recovery program, on page 1 "Select types of lost files" select and press Start.

On page 2 "Where did you lose your files" you can see the drives recognized by the program, select the drive and press Scan.

If your drive isn't there then the recovery program couldn't recognize it.

vishvanath,

You got the Registration key in the Readme file.

Copy it, then press the More icon, choose Activate and paste in the Registration key.

Man,

No, I have Recuva and it says 'No data found'.

This program found all files on a very badly damaged memory card.

TechN,

A drive has to "Power up" in order for the electronics to work, which is needed by any program that needs to access the data. Otherwise, if the electronics does not work, or the electronics do not have electrical power, then the drive has to be disassembled, the media taken out, and then placed into an exact duplicate of the drive it came out of. That can be difficult for an IOMAGIC drive because everything tends to be on one circuit board. It might be possible to separate the media (memory chips) and transfer them to another matching drive. I know that is way more than the average person is willing to face, but technically it could be possible.

For standard (magnetic platter) hard drives, this type of recovery has been used by the high-end recovery shops. Of course that is changing with more memory chips being used for storage. Still, it might be possible if the data is that valuable.

Here is the concept regardless of what media the data is stored on.

If the new drive's electronics work the same as the original drive, then the data can be accessed, as long as the media itself is still readable. Also, the electronics hardware of the two drives often have to have the exact same model numbers of the individual components, otherwise they might not be programmed to work the same way as to how they locate data on the media. Manufacturers often change chip suppliers midstream, and those chips can be programmed differently. It makes it all very difficult in some cases, and can be very expensive to actually recover the data.

You can see from that dilemma, that determining why the power is not working may be a better approach. First, see if you can get the power problem solved. It could be loose wire, solder joint, bad switch, bad connector, or any other reason that the electrical power is not reaching the hardware electronics. If you get that solved, that may be all you need. Even that can be difficult with something like an IOMAGIC drive because of the difficulty even getting into them to do any diagnostic.

When I purchase a new drive of any type, I purchase two of the exact model, hoping to get the same matching electronics versions off of of the assembly line. That way if one of the drives ever fail, I immediately remove it from the system, and copy all the data off of the other so that it can be re-formatted to be as close as possible to how I initially received it. Then if after all other types of recovery fails, at least I have a drive that the media can be placed into for another attempt.

Nowadays, hard drives, external drives, backup drives, are all very inexpensive compared to how they once were. I always do multiple types of backups, so I have never needed to rescue my own data. In those rare occasions that a drive of any type fails, it becomes a piece of hardware that I cannot trust to ever use again (a throwaway item). Still, it is a challenge for me, so I still go through the duplicate drive recovery method just to see if it is possible. Over all the many years, I have only had this happen five times. So far, I have had success with 3 of the 5 drives. Each one was way beyond their projected life, and HD Sentinel warned of their impending death for the last two (didn't have it before). The first two were SCSI drives, from a long time ago, and I was not able to recover anything.

Hard drives are getting much more reliable as well. The last one I had fail where I could attempt this type of recovery was just over 3 years ago, and the last one before that was 5 more years. As more media become memory chip based, I probably will not have another chance for a long time if at all. I started in electronics many years ago, so I am sure that I am reaching the end.

I work in electronics so attempting this type of recovery is not as much of a scare for me as it is for someone that does not do that type of diagnostics. As a last resort, there are companies that do the delicate diagnostics to recover data.

Regardless of any immediate need, it is always a good idea to have good recovery programs such as IUWEshare USB Flash Drive Data Recovery software installed, just in case you ever need it. I install each GOTD Recovery program and test it against a common disk that has files that the OS cannot find, but most recovery programs can. just a few years back, there was a big spread between the different recovery programs and what they could recover. Now, they are getting close to all being able to recover the same files. That is a good thing because it is becoming less critical what you choose to install.

Best of luck to you.

Pawl,
The operating system doesn't distinguish between file types when creating or deleting. If it did it wouldn't be able to work with new file types.
A decent recovery program is able to recover any file type as long as it has not been overwritten.

Tata, "ISO File" is a file that contains the complete image of a disc, created by copying an entire disc, from sector 0 to the end, into a single file. Is the programme capable of accessing the contents of a disk saved in the form of such an image?

Pawl, Download and try the program !

Diana,
You can't retrieve anything off a "dead" flash drive.

If the drive letter does not appear in Explorer, you can'y retrieve anything.

Jim,

I have a badly damaged memory card, the file system lost.

Explorer doesn't see this card, no drive letter, but the recovery program can see it and I can choose it.

Tata,
Same experience, claimed 10,000+ files were found, though I had limited the search to one category.
It so happened that I had only recently deleted a folder with a number of images I had no use for. A friend of mine however sorely wanted them.
Having already recovered these files 3 days using an extremely similar app I nevertheless installed today's bargain because I could not be sure whether the other app had managed to recover the lot. It turned out that the new kid on the block also did not find any more but showed up even more files for which nobody would need recovery software. Accordingly, the search took longer.
The trouble with the stuff from ChengDu is that 20 different names are just different names.