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Amit Kumar

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corrupt flash drive data recovery

I am using OS x mavericks and I found today my flash drive goes corrupt , flash drive is not being listed into "devices" or not even in disk-utility , how can I recover data from it .
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Giladn
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First, If your drive is not listed it might not be "ON" . sometimes it's a matter for usb connector goes bad, try on another computer - preferably a PC , if it does not gets recognized send it to a recovery shop in you area..

G
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Member_2_406981

Its not GOING to be corrupted, it seems already broken. If its not recognized anymore as a device on a PC or other computer you cannot recover data yourself.

As mentioned above, try another compuzer, preferably on another architecture/Operating system, if it is also not recognized there you have no choice yourself to recover anything.

You need to ask a data recovery lab for help. Depending on what was broken they are able to restore the data. If the controller broke that does the wear levelling you are out of luck, then frequently nothing or very less can be restored,
as the bitmap of the block remappings are lost and the data on the flash chips are usually not in sequence due to the wear leveling, sometimes even distributed in chunks over several chips.
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nobus
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Question for Dave, if a flash drive has limit number of writes, does it apply same with SSD ? I replaced my movable HDD with SSD into my macbook pro and now I am worries , is SSD way harder to get recover than normal HDD though ?
Well SSD's use a different technology to normal Flash drives, but, yes SSD have a limited life, However they are designed for use as a main drive and therefore will sustain more writes that a USB stick which is designed for occasional use (writes) only and should last a normal lifetime.

There are also  "Enterprise" SSD drives which are designed to tolerate more writes than "Client" SSD drives. Kingston have this semi marketing explanation:-

http://www.kingston.com/en/ssd/enterprise/best_practices/enterprise_versus_client_ssd

which is interesting and there is the JEDEC document

"SOLID STATE DRIVE (SSD) REQUIREMENTS AND ENDURANCE TEST METHOD"  

here:-

http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/docs/jesd218a

which details the differences and is available for free download after a free sign up.
don't worry about the limited life span - it's more than enough for all normal users
but it does not recover 100%  the same way due to it's properties (ram vs platter)