USB Music Files Gone!

Brentg · 16 Oct 2019

I have/had a USB drive with 1600 songs on it. I use it in my car and bring it in to add songs. Today I had it in my computer working on something else and I bumped it a couple of times, and It pops on and off, and eventually lost all the music. I have a backup of most of them, but I would like to get them all back.
I downloaded a "Free" disk recovery tool and it found them but wanted payment for anything over 1gig. Is there a program or method I can use to get them back without paying 1/2 a hundred?

Thanks

Jacee · 16 Oct 2019

This is free, have you tried it? USB Flash Drive Recovery Software Recover Files from USB - EaseUS

ignatzatsonic · 16 Oct 2019

What tool did you try?

Recuva and Getdataback are generally well regarded, but I have never used either and don't know if they charge for all recoveries.

Get one of those USB sticks that are no larger than a jelly bean--they don't stick out and you aren't likely to whack them accidentally on your dashboard or on your PC. 1600 songs might fit on an 8 gb drive that you can get for under 10 bucks.

Brentg · 17 Oct 2019

Jacee said:

This is free, have you tried it? USB Flash Drive Recovery Software Recover Files from USB - EaseUS

I don't think I have tried this one. All that I have tried have a limit on how much you can recover. Thanks

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ignatzatsonic said:

What tool did you try?

Recuva and Getdataback are generally well regarded, but I have never used either and don't know if they charge for all recoveries.

Get one of those USB sticks that are no larger than a jelly bean--they don't stick out and you aren't likely to whack them accidentally on your dashboard or on your PC. 1600 songs might fit on an 8 gb drive that you can get for under 10 bucks.

I think I tried Recuva. It has a limit on how much you can retrieve, before paying for it. Thanks

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Jacee said:

This is free, have you tried it? USB Flash Drive Recovery Software Recover Files from USB - EaseUS

I just checked it out and there is a 2gig limit on what can be recovered.

Jacee · 17 Oct 2019

What bit-rate?

Samuria · 17 Oct 2019

When you say gone not showing up any of the files or showing raw partition?

Brentg · 17 Oct 2019

Samuria said:

When you say gone not showing up any of the files or showing raw partition?

Not showing any files. A couple of the recovery programs the guys mentioned found the files, but had limits on how much you could recover for free.

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Jacee said:

What bit-rate?

I do not understand. Do you mean how fast the programs could recover the files?

Bree · 17 Oct 2019

Brentg said:

I don't think I have tried this one. All that I have tried have a limit on how much you can recover. Thanks
I think I tried Recuva. It has a limit on how much you can retrieve, before paying for it. Thanks
I just checked it out and there is a 2gig limit on what can be recovered.

Kickass Undelete is free and Open Source.
Kickass Undelete - a free, open source file recovery tool for Windows

Brentg · 18 Oct 2019

Bree said:

Kickass Undelete is free and Open Source.
Kickass Undelete - a free, open source file recovery tool for Windows

Thank You, Bree!. That's what I was looking for.

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Thanks to all who assisted me with this problem!

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Hey folks. I just reopened this post to let everyone in on what transpired after I downloaded the file recovery program that Bree suggested. I opened the program and inserted my USB stick and All the music files came up! I was more than pleasantly surprised. I have no idea how this could happen since I looked at it many times before that and it would say, in effect, "You need to format this drive, before you can use it" and then I would run one of the "free" programs on it, it would find the files, and inform me that I could only recover "X" amount of data using the free version.
Anyway, another mystery has happened in lieu of my losing my music files. I did have most of them backed up to my hard drive. I copied them to one of those, "jellybean sized", 64 gig usb sticks that ignatzatsonic suggested I get. I had the drive split into two volumes and had been using one for boot files and backup and the other volume for general backup. I merged the volumes and copied the music files to the drive. I played a couple songs from the 64 gig drive on my computer and then took it out to my car and it would not play! It just gave me a message that "the music could not be played.
I tried my former drive in my car and it played fine. Now I would like to know what I can do to this 64gig drive to use it as my primary music drive, as I do like it much better than the other one, due to its physical size and capacity. Sorry about this lengthy diatribe, but I wanted to cover what was going on.

Thanks to all for your help