vunet wrote:
> My thumb drive (or Samsung MP3 player) stores some important data I
> can no longer retrieve. Windows OS detects the plugged-in drive but
> when I click on assigned letter, the error is:
>
> E: is not accessible. The request could not be performed because of an
> I/O device error
>
> It happened after I plugged it into somebody's MAC, created a new
> folder and copied some content in there. However, I never had problems
> using the thumb drive with my own MAC.
>
> Anyway, I do not want to format it and Fix Errors did not work. What
> should I do now? Please recommend. I need to somehow get that data.
>
> Thanks
>
> PS Somebody recommended me to force mount my drive on a Linux machine
> with Samba installed. I do not have Linux available yet. So in a
> meantime maybe there is another fix?
I move my thumb drive from my MacBook to PCs all the time and create
folders, delete stuff, etc. from either system(s) with no problem. I have
noticed that on every Vista machine, Vista wants to scan my thumb drive
first. This doesn't happen in any other Windows OS. I always say "no" of
course. Perhaps you allowed Vista to scan and "fix" your thumb drive.
So, let's determine if the drive is at fault or the data is just corrupted.
Attach the thumb drive to your Mac.
1. If it can be seen:
Copy the data to the hard drive and burn to a CD/DVD-R. Make sure you use a
burning format that works in both Mac and Windows. Toast gives you this
option; if you don't have third-party burning software you'll need to
research whether OS X's built-in burning capability will do this.
Once you have the data safely off the thumb drive, take it to a PC and
format it. Now copy the data from the CD/DVD-R to the thumb drive. Don't
ever let Vista "fix" your thumb drive again.
2. If the thumb drive can't be seen on the Mac, then it has died. The only
way to get data off a dead thumb drive is to send it to a professional data
recovery company like Drive Savers (my preference) or Seagate Data
Recovery. I don't know if the recovery prices Drive Savers charges are
different for flash drives as opposed to hard drives, but you can figure on
something like $500-$3,000. Only you know if this data is worth spending
that kind of money. I understand that some insurance companies are now
covering data recovery charges so check with yours.
Drive Savers -
http://www.drivesavers.com
Seagate Data Recovery Services -
https://www.seagatedatarecovery.com/
Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers
www.elephantboycomputers.com
Don't Panic!