USB-Thumb drive not seen by SpinRite but is seen by BIOS and ValiDrive

[sconnell]

Hello, I hope it is ok okay to ask usage questions here.

I have a USB thumb drive that Windows reports as having no valid operating system. File recovery software can recover files, but without a directory structure. I thought SpinRite might help to repair the thumb drive and file system. However, when I tried to run SpinRite, it never indexed the USB stick, so I could not select it for repair activities. That said, in the BIOS, I can see that the drive is listed, and I can also run Validrive on the drive and get a completely green result screen. Is there anything else I could try to get SpinRite to see it? Reading the forums, I thought running SpinWrite VirtualBox might help, but I thought to ask here if that is a valid idea before I put in the effort. Alternatively, are there other suggestions? I have tried inserting the USB into different slots and also tried to use a dock.

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

 

[AlanD]

At a guess, either the boot sector or partition table is damaged. If File Recovery software can see files, it is probably doing so by scanning the disk contents sector by sector, rather than using the FAT/MFT to locate files.

If there is anything important on there, I would use the Recovery software to get what you can.

You could try TestDisk from https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Download. Having recovered what you can, you could try recreating the partition table, if it is a USB stick, it is probably a single partition, formatted FAT32 and using the whole drive. You may suddenly find the whole drive is usable again.

 

[peterblaise]

Is ANOTHER USB drive 'seeable' by SpinRite 6.1 <-- I'm presuming 6.1,
but you could test with SpinRite 6 and SpinRite 5, also, and with SpinRite
6 or 5, you can also test with MS-DOS, which might behave differently
toward USB than FreeDOS.

If YES, another USB drive is 'seeable' by SpinRite 6.1, then the bad USB
drive in question may not 'present' itself to BIOS and FreeDOS, which
are responsible for presenting it to Spinrite 6.1.

If NO, another USB drive cann't be 'seen' by SpinRite 6.1, then your
computer BIOS probably does not enumerate USB drives beyond the
first bootable USB drive, which in this case, is the SpinRite 6.1 USB boot
drive itself - alernatively, run Spinrite 6.1 from CD or from a
FreeDOS-formatted boot HDD or SSD, then the single bad USB drive
in questions might be discovered.

ValiDrive says the drive is OK, so, as suggested, the CONTENTS of the
partition information are probably 'damaged', and SpinRite 6.1 would
probably agree that the drive itself os OK, and move on.

You may be loking for repairs to the partition <-- NOT SpinRite's
assigned task.

Let us know what you do, and share the results.

Thanks.