Ren W., you may find that it finds nothing as there could be an electrical fault in the USB drive resulting in all sectors being read as zero's or some other fixed value so no traces of original file data is readable. I'd use something like HxD hex editor extras option to look at the crashed physical drives sectors and see if there is any valid readable data on the device if I were you.

Ren W.,

Data recovery is a complicated case, its recovery result depends upon the specific data loss environment. Although your crashed external usb drive can be recognized, but it doesn't mean the lost data can be recovered via the software, it needs further analysis, for example, the crashed external usb drive has original capacity? We have encountered many customers' data recovery problem as similar as yours: the corrupted drive can be recognized, the lost data cannot be recovered. After our analysis, we find the corrupted drive is unreadable, the corrupted drive has been physically failed, etc.

If you need further help, please feel free to contact support@m3datarecovery.com.

TK, Thanks for the tip TK, checked out that HXD editor, looks decent, but just a bit hesitant to install a program that has not been updated in almost 10 years, on my newer WIN 10 pc , have had bad experiences before with that before.Thks

Ren W., no need to be concerened, it's not been updated because it has no reported bugs and works with all versions of x86 32bit and 64bit versions of windows.
Programs that require frequent updates are generally buggy or missing features. HxD is already mature and well programmed. And no I have no affiliation with the author, just used the program on every PC I've used since Windows 98! last version was released in 2009 so it's only 8 years old and still no need for the developer to pull up the dev system and mess with it despite 3 and have new windows releases! You can get a portable edition if you want.

vin,

I'm Not going to say that the voting system, here at GOTD, or anywhere else is guaranteed reliable -- there are most always ways to scam the system if you wanted to torpedo a certain dev for example. I will say that thousands of people download, yet by the time a GOTD is over, maybe 50 have commented, making up just a small percentage of the total that try whatever software.

Personally I think maybe the best way to approach it usually is to take neither comments nor votes as absolutes. If I really need a GOTD offer, & most votes &/or comments are negative, I'll still check it out. If I don't want/need it so badly, if I find something that's a deal breaker in the comments, &/or the votes trend negative, whether I check it out or research further depends on how much time I have to spend that day.

vin, you don't have to leave a review to vote (Its optional)

gerrymar, Could you suggest a good free recovery programme which will recover the files from my 16GB SD card please. I tried formatting it with my Xperia XZ AND my PC but neither were able to do it!
Thanks

Tina Rayner,
The one that has never failed me over the years (well, almost never) would be PhotoRec.

http://www.techradar.com/reviews/testdisk-and-photorec

Tina Rayner, try to download Rlinux. There is also a Win-version. Also a boot-version for free.

Tina Rayner, try recuva
its perfectly worked out

Tina Rayner,

Please check if there is something wrong with your SD card. If Windows is unable to format it, it proves there is something wrong with your SD card, in this situation, data recovery software is difficult to recover data, the best way is to send the corrupted SD card to a local data recovery service for help.

Besides, please don't format it before data recovery is successfully done, otherwise, maybe some data will be lost forever.

Tina Rayner, I have tried a few Recovery Programs to try and get back my lost photos from a 64GB SD card, even 7-Data Card Recovery and a few others that deal with SD cards etc, but they could not even find anything on the card! Then i remembered i had MiniTool Power Data Recovery 7.0 from a previous giveaway. I tried the option Digital Media Recovery option and ran it and LO and Behold There was all most of my photos, got back about 88%, some were to Damaged to get back, but was very happy with the Result, Also my German mate got his photos and other Data back from his cheap Smart phone.
You could try the Free version, as it won't make anything worse on the card by Trying, here is the Link: https://www.powerdatarecovery.com/power-data-recovery.html

Mark (Australia)

Rembeo le santhos, I installed this and followed it to the letter BUT it didnt work. An error msg said 'Failed To Scan:
unable to determine file system type'. I then put the SD card into a different USB card reader and another error msg popped up this time saying 'Failed To Scan:
the device is not ready'! I was really hopeful about this too coz i've heard a lot of good things about Recuva (*.^)

Tina66, are you using win xp operating system, if yes please try win 7 or more.

Rembeo le santhos, No I'm using Windows 10....☺

Mark, Thanks, I'll install it later and give it a try. That's good that you got most of your photos back

Kedar , Can you send your install failed screenshots to support@m3datarecovery.com

Hello Justme,
this is the case that we see pretty often among the users.

Our download letters include two active links - one to start the program download and another to click if you received the letter by a mistake and you want to receive no more letters from us, so called ignore list.

Your email is now in this ignore list, which means that somehow before you clicked the wrong link and added yourself to the list.

Your email was removed from it, so please try to request the download link one more time.

There should be no problems with getting the letter this time, but we kindly ask the users to pay more attention to the actions they perform.

GOTD support team

Helen, I never received an email at all, so no links were clicked. Tried to get email sent again using my hotmail/outlook account and still did not receive (not in junk either). So then used a different gmail email address an now have the download link.

"... it adds that bootable media is not available... Add to that I can find no reference to it being able to create and work off an image file..."

FWIW & If or In Case it helps at all TK...
I've seen a fair number of issues booting to removable media across different hardware, that's often worse when trying to use the bootable media created with different apps themselves. So much so that, with the exception of the excellent boot media created by Macrium Reflect Free, I use my own solutions. I've got a Very light weight MistyPE ISO, that I use with Rufus to create a bootable USB stick with different boot parameters as required. I've used the Windows 10 ADK to create different types of WinPE, e.g. from USB sticks to VHDs. And I've got a small external HDD set up as a Windows To Go Drive -- created in Win10 using the Ent ISO, it's not activated, but that hasn't mattered so far for this sort of thing. Yeah, all that may be overkill, but I can pick & choose the easiest route for what I need to accomplish.

I have a folder reserved for portable, semi-portable, and some setup files for utilities like M3 Data Recovery Home, 7-zip etc. that I can add to bootable media or set up once it's booted, and I install many of them to that Windows To Go Drive. I use Macrium Reflect for imaging... if the image is for use with something like M3 Data Recovery Home, I'll restore it to a drive/partition & work on it there, keeping the image as backup until no longer needed. Or in theory I could restore the image to more than one drive, & have more than one app working on recovery at the same time.

TK,

Firstly, thanks for your comments.

M3 Data Recovery has three editions so that it can meet different customers' need. Bitlocker data recovery and bootable media are advanced features, it is why Professional and Technician editions support, while Home edition doesn't support them.

Our product adopts "Rebuild/Repair file system" method to fix RAW partition. If the damage to file system is serious, the only way is to recover data from RAW partition, so not every RAW drive can be converted to NTFS/FAT32 due to different cause reasons, it depends upon the specific environment. If there are a few of bad sectors, our software can read data, but if there are lots of bad sectors, the best way is to send the physically failed hard drive to a local data recovery service for help as data recovery service is professional to recover data from physically failed hard drive.

About the functions of creating disk image and RAID recovery, we will consider them in future version according to our customers' need and market.

Tim, I do professionally recover files from damaged drives including replacing hard drive controller boards where appropriate, so it is very unlikely I'd resort to paying someone else to do my job! I would NEVER do a rebuild/repair operation on a customers failing or failed drive as that would invaribly make matters worse and open me up for liability for a damages claim. I would at first copy the drives data to a replacement drive and then attempt recovery/repairs on that, not performing any unecesary writes to the customers drive at all.

Juck, that's assuming the Drive is electrically and mechanically undamaged... otherwise the repair action will likely make matters a lot worse!

Tim, Thanks for the links Tim. Appreciated

Tim, thanks but that is the online help for the Professional edition not the Home edition given away here.

TK,

Online help covers all editions.

Tim, in that it covers features NOT available in the Home Edition without stating clearly that such features are Pro or Technician edition only features means that it is not covering the usage limitation of the Home edition at all!