I apologize if this problem has been posted before, but I couldn’t find a topic with quite the same issues/symptoms.
First, I was on an average Windows XP when I plugged in my flash drive. I left for a moment, and when I returned to open the drive, it had been deteremined to be a MMD : SD drive, which I think is supposed to be for cameras… when I opened the drive, there were no contents. The flash drive was empty.
In case it was just a specific computer’s problem, I then tried using the flash drive on another pc, and it, too appeared to be completely wiped. However, the other computers rightly identified the flash drive as a ‘removable disk.’
When I checked the disk’s properties, it appears both devoid of free space and not occupied at all: http://i.imgur.com/k9K4m.png
In addition, the red light on the flash drive will ‘breathe’ for the first few moments of being connected, then begins to blink quickly and never stop.
I have tried data recovery software without success, and chkdsk seems impossible because the system ‘cannot find the file specified’ to check in cmd.
Maybe there is little hope, but I will grasp onto anything. This is just another story of a researcher that was dumb enough to not back up the last two months of experimental data. Any help at all is appreciated.
Edit: When in the disk’s properties, I asked it to ‘check for errors’ under ‘tools,’ and got a pop-up saying ‘the disk check cannot be performed because Windows could not access the disk’ …and yet, I can still open the drive and see the nothingness inside it. Does this… make sense?
Edit 2: The drive is visible in device manager, and considered ‘working properly.’ In disk management, it is titled ‘Removable (E:)’ and has ‘No media.’
…Please help. ):
