USB thumb drive not readable: The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer

[hakxmaster]

My Toshiba 4GB thumb drive us popping up an error very time I insert it. The error shows:

When I open Disk Utility, the drive is shown but none of the volumes are readable. All of the options to verify disk or formatting are greyed out. When I tried Disk Warrior, it did not read my disk at all.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Sounds like a dead thumb drive. Try it on another computer, if same thing just toss it - you can get 16GB thumb drives for under $10.

 

[hakxmaster]

Sounds like a dead thumb drive. Try it on another computer, if same thing just toss it - you can get 16GB thumb drives for under $10.

I've tried it on another computer. It didn't work at all. Also, I don't just want to toss it, I have some data on it that I don't want to lose.

 

[brentsg]

It sounds like you already have.

 

[brand]

It sounds like you already have.

I concur. A USB flash drive should never be a location to store data that you do not want to loose.

 

[Fishrrman]

To the OP:

You didn't tell us -how- the flashdrive is formatted. That's important information.

IF it was formatted to HFS+ (Mac format), and if nothing else works, you could do this:
1. Reinitialize it in Disk Utility. Yes, you read that right. Just do a quick reinitialization. Do not, repeat DO NOT, choose to "zero out" the data.

2. Use a data recovery app like DataRescue3 (or Disk Drill, or Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery) to do a "deep scan" of the newly-initialized drive.

3. Save the recovered files somewhere else.

Why this can work:
When you initialize the drive, all you do is replace the old (corrupted) directory with a fresh (and "empty") one. The old data is STILL OUT THERE on the drive. The data recovery app will "work around" the directory, and "go right to the sectors" of the drive, scavenge around, and re-assemble what it finds onto a scratch disk.

If this works, you WILL lose file names and folder hierarchies. This is par for the course with data recovery.

AGAIN -- this is a "last resort", but it worked for me (with a corrupted partition on an HDD) when nothing else would.

ALSO -- the above procedure can work IF the drive is HFS+. If it was "cross-platform" formatted ("fat"?) I have no idea whether this can work or not on a Mac. It -might- work if you have a PC on which you can access the drive...

 

[hakxmaster]

To the OP:

You didn't tell us -how- the flashdrive is formatted. That's important information.

IF it was formatted to HFS+ (Mac format), and if nothing else works, you could do this:
1. Reinitialize it in Disk Utility. Yes, you read that right. Just do a quick reinitialization. Do not, repeat DO NOT, choose to "zero out" the data.

2. Use a data recovery app like DataRescue3 (or Disk Drill, or Stellar Phoenix Data Recovery) to do a "deep scan" of the newly-initialized drive.

3. Save the recovered files somewhere else.

Why this can work:
When you initialize the drive, all you do is replace the old (corrupted) directory with a fresh (and "empty") one. The old data is STILL OUT THERE on the drive. The data recovery app will "work around" the directory, and "go right to the sectors" of the drive, scavenge around, and re-assemble what it finds onto a scratch disk.

If this works, you WILL lose file names and folder hierarchies. This is par for the course with data recovery.

AGAIN -- this is a "last resort", but it worked for me (with a corrupted partition on an HDD) when nothing else would.

ALSO -- the above procedure can work IF the drive is HFS+. If it was "cross-platform" formatted ("fat"?) I have no idea whether this can work or not on a Mac. It -might- work if you have a PC on which you can access the drive...

My drive is formatted with FAT and the partition table is MBR.