Just found than when you quit, the process is still active the forbidding Magoshare to run again if you don't kill it !

Tiff, if the USB device is no longer initialising properly so it no longer produces a viable storage device, i.e. responds insert media into drive or any other error when you attempt to access it, then no generic recovery tool such as this, that does not access the controllers using a manuafacturer specific driver, is going to be able to access the FLASH media. That error usually occours when the FLASH chip low level data has been trashed. The chances are if the device claimed it was a 1TB or 2TB USB Thumb drive obtained from platforms such as wish.com it is 100% fake and only ever had between 8GB and 32GB of real FLASH memory chips inside and the firmware was hacked to falsely report impossible size for that price.

Hint any FLASH media you buy from those platforms the first thing you should do is test them with the 3rd party utility h2testw utility and if it reports errors in red/pink background, screen shot the window and request a refund as they are never going to be reliable even if you partition them to only use the existing FLASH memory as they would have been manufacturer seconds that they couldn't sell originally.

TK, Thank you for answering. I did get them from Amazon.com. And when I first started using them, they did say they had the proper amount, but I didn't check them with the utility you suggested. My biggest problem was with Windows File Explorer deciding to just crash and restart in the middle of transferring files (It STILL does this) at which point it seems to "pull" the drive without "ejecting" it, thus creating an unmounted drive. (If it happens with my regular hard drive, it just drops bunches of files I'm transferring and I have to figure out what is missing.)

Do you happen to know of any Utilities that can either restore or just format in a new MBR? At this point I don't care if I lose the files, it would just be nice if they were usable even at 32GB. And I will try that utility you suggested for a couple of other ones I have.

Tiff, I'd expect any 1TB or 2TB USB flash drive or microSD card to be absolutely fake unless they are a well known brand costing several hundred pounds. Even then I would use h2tesw to confirm they were really that brands product and matched read/write speeds claimed as well as the full storage media in operation. There are genuine products being sold at reduced prices that are unanounced manufacturer seconds that did not pass QC checks, those need to be validated too.
There is a tool that claims to be able to reflash firmware on certain controllers but I have never had any success using it. It allegedly does not work on Vista and above as the drivers were designed for XP. My personal recomendation is if the firmware has crashed because of flash memory failure bodging it back to life is just asking for future data loss as the FLASH memory is faulty and will in all probability fail in the not too distant future. Also bear in mind many USB thumbdrives and SDcards are not designed for long periods of continuos writing and are prone to fail prematurely and heavy write intensive applications like security cameras and Dash cam use does invlaidate the warranty on some brands and only their high-endurance range is warranted for continuos writing applications.
Note Windows Explorer crashing is a symptom of the firmware crashing mid activity. Ask the amazon seller if there is any warranty on the products you bought... if they are UK sellers (unlikely) there are certain statutory rights you may have.

Jay Barney,

>"Estimated time remaining: 10:36:27""
Same here, but it will finish if allowed. After activation, I selected a relatively new 4TB drive that has only 167 GB used. The scan did its initial scan, and showed an estimated time remaining of 10:36:22. I let the program run, and it does actually take that long to scan the entire drive.

Steve Palmer, registered just fine here but of course I did not try typing the key in but coppied and pasted.

krypteller, how do i put it on a usb-stick please.

"If all could be recovered, that would mean more than 80 GB. Amazing, as the virtual machine has a 25 GB size."

FWIW I've seen this with many [most?] other file recovery apps as well. I *assume* that they report all possible ways of stringing the fragments back together, leaving it up to you to find out which ones actually work.

slasher, copy the programme folder on to it.

slasher, I just directed the installation to my USB stick and it installed fine and is currently running from there. I deleted an entire folder completely last week thinking that I didn't need it anymore and am trying to recover it right now. Doubtful because I did a lot of work on that particular drive afterward and those files were probably overwritten, MY fault, not this program. Thus far (with 80% of the scan yet to go), this program has found 8000 deleted files but not the ones I want restored yet.

slasher,
Simply plug in the USB stick, start the install and at the point it asks where to install, choose browse and then the USB directory in the dropdown menu. I hope that helps.

TAYLOR, LMAO "shredded files" are NOT deleted files but overwritten at least once. Even NSA and other nation states labs cannot recover properly overwritten data (aka shredded files)

If you want to critique the description the use of "lost files due to ".. "erasure" is false since erasure means either secure erase ATA command or one or more overwrites of original data as well as directory entry destruction via renames and file length truncation to zero after file expansion to end of last cluster and overwritten at least once. Just plain file deletion or deletion from recycle bin on an SSD in an interface under the control or an operating system that supports TRIM or SCSI Deallocate command also practically erases deleted items as well as deleted partitions/volumes. Rendering previous data irretrievable without accessing the SSD FLASH memory chips directly and imediately.
TK

"Just plain file deletion or deletion from recycle bin on an SSD in an interface under the control or an operating system that supports TRIM or SCSI Deallocate command also practically erases deleted items as well as deleted partitions/volumes."

FWIW, since TRIM can also be run from an SSD's firmware, why I think it makes sense to immediately do an all sector image backup of the effected partition if/when you realize that you need to perform file recovery, then perform that recovery on the restored backup.

TK,
Yes some people should know that deleted files (most of can be recovered) and erased filed (cannot be recovered) are not the same.

mike, TRIM is an extended ATA command not an independently actioned firmware function. I think you are confusing garbage collection which occurs after existing file writes which demands the existing write page be copied to an erased write block and merged with the newly written sectors data... then after some idle time and the firmware goes through the queue of deallocated write blocks and where the write blocks complete an erase block the previously allocated stale FLASH memory Erase page worth of flash memory cells are electrically erased and allowed to rejoin the wear levelling spare pool. That process does not affect the recoverability of recently deleted files or recently deleted partitions. Whether TRIM is properly implemented by the firmware, interface and operating system as a complete system determines whether ANY deleted file can be recovered after a normal operating system formal delete operation.

If TRIM or SCSI Deallocate is implemented correctly no operating system controlled deleted file recovery should be possible immediately after the deletion since the act of deallocating the previously occupied LBA address is the first and immediate action of issuing the TRIM/Deallocate command upon a file/folder/partition deletion.

The Firmware cannot by itself issue a TRIM command on ANY LBA assignment since it is content agnostic, in that the firmware has no idea and does not care about what the written data to any specific LBA sector is and must be explicitly told by the operating system the data at any specific LBA address is garbage and not needed any more by an EXPLICIT issuance of a TRIM or SCSI Deallocate command and as said before in response the firmware should immediately deallocate that LBA addresses access to the FLASH memory. Any subsequent reads of a TRIMmed LBA address should result in a Zero value read from either a buffer of zeros or a firmware loop of a sectors worth of zeros until a new write is done at that LBA address and a new FLASH memory write page sub-block is assigned to it. The whole process is very convoluted but there is no mysterious smoke and mirrors it is entirely logical just far more complex than most people realise when wear levelling is involved.

The only correct best practice advice with ANY form of storage is to make multiple types of backups, online and offline, on-site and off-site and if accidental deletion or even erasure occurs one can retrieve a copy of the file or files with certainty. And not depend upon low probability lost file recovery tools.