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Trying to recover files on USB Drive (corrupted names)


Edion Gecos

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Please excuse if this is not the correct forum section to post the below.

A friend recently moved some personal files like family photos, documents etc. from an old computer running Windows XP to a USB flash drive in order to later transfer them to a new computer, but when he actually inserted that USB into the new computer yesterday, he noticed that the data seems to be corrupted. We tried it on my machine as well and indeed all the folder and file names are made up of odd characters (see picture).


The files are still on the disk, but can not be accessed or even renamed. (To make it worse, he did not copy but move the files and afterwards the harddisk on his old computer was automatically defragment via a screensaver option, thus overwriting the files with other stuff. It was not possible for me to recover them on the computer).

My hunch is that he may have removed the USB from that old computer without probably unplugging it first - maybe even before the transfer of the files was completely finished - and therefore it corrupted the content somehow.

 

Thus my question to the experts here: Is there a way/tool to make the data on the USB readable/accessible again?
Any help is much appreciated! 

Corrupt files & folders on USB.jpg

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2 hours ago, Edion Gecos said:

he may have removed the USB from that old computer without probably unplugging it first - maybe even before the transfer of the files was completely finished

From my personal experience I can assure you that would not result in this type of corruption.  My best guess would be a virus/ransomware.  Follow that path.

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Thank you to DLord and mp68terr for their suggestion (and sorry for taking a while to give some feedback)

 

To make sure there is no virus involved, I did scanned the USB drive with ESET Antivirus and it came up clean. (I also don't think it has to do with ransomware as the actual computer is not affected and nowhere does a "pay up" message appear.)

Testdisk/Photorec seems to be a reputable program, but as the USB has not been formatted or the files on it deleted (the data is still there, but with gibberish name), there is no partition or file to be recovered here. It did only come up with about 10 older pictures but there is about 11 GB of data on the USB drive...

I also tried the program "GetDataBack Pro" (I have a working serial), which on another forum was suggested as a possible solution for a similar kind of problem, but again only the same few picture could be found.

 

After long searches, I read somewhere that this sort of gibberish naming of files and folders usually happens when a "modern" USB flash disk is plugged into an "old" PCs (Pentium IV or lower maybe).

Some old USB controllers - those that were manufactured before >4-GB flash storage were developed - simply do not support USB drives larger than 2GB. Apparently, as a result, the files (or rather the file system?) get corrupted.

 

I need to investigate more, but I think this might be the case here as well....

So no solution yet, thus further help is still appreciated.

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Someone suggested the following in some other forum for a very similar problem (see attached pic).  Hope this helps.

"You can highlight the name of one of these files, then select a normal Windows text option such as Ariel.  This should revert the text to a legible form."

IMG.jpg

 

P.S. I heard "MiniTool Power Data Recovery" does a very good job, but have not tried it myself.

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