Flash drives...

Okay, this is a bit of a random topic but...

Do any of you guys have any experience whatsoever with broken flash drives? And by broken, I meant that the computer begins telling you its malfunctioned and can't install it.

Yes, you've guessed it - this has happened the the flash drive I had my story on

I know, I know - tell me I'm a lazy idiot for not backing up my story regularly on my computer, because I am! I can't remember when my last back up was, but since I had a bit of a writing fest over the past few days, I know I've written several quiet good chapters (maybe 5) since I last saved and I really don't want to lose them And now I am stressing - big time!!

I've given my demented friend to my dad to take into work with him, but unfortunately the computer specialist person is going away today for 2 weeks (just my luck, right?). So we shall see..... *fingers crossed*

Has this happened to anyone before and if it did, could you get the data off of it? A clear answer either way would be extremely helpful if you have experience with this because I need to know whether I should focus and remembering what I wrote, or moving on the next chapter.

Thank you!!!

Try a different computer. At school this'd happen a lot even though I knew very well that it was working perfectly on my home PC.
Do you have Windows XP? If you do, make a briefcase file in your flash drive and drag the files into the briefcase. (Save the story on your Hard drive before doing it.) Then, every time you open it on the computer, press 'Synchronize' and it's backed up!
(That's what I did for my first novel... I'm a bit worried about this draft as it isn't backed up. I'll back it up on my email now)

Emma wrote:Okay, this is a bit of a random topic but...

Do any of you guys have any experience whatsoever with broken flash drives? And by broken, I meant that the computer begins telling you its malfunctioned and can't install it.

Install? You mean mount (Linux), or open (Windows), right?

It depends on your problem, if your computer doesn't recognize it, check out this article:
http://www.ehow.com/how_4963705_fix-flash-unrecognizable-drive-malfunction.html

If your computer does recognizes it, but won't open when you click it (in this case it probably wouldn't show a, then you might have a problem with the autorun.inf file, caused by viruses. Now it doesn't mean that you have a virus, this is caused by removing the virus, but not fixing the autorun file. Another article:
http://www.ghiath.com/?p=36

It would help, if I knew what the problem was or the error message.
Oh and ask your father if the drive works on his work computer, if you can't have another available computer.

Thanks for the info guys! Unfortunately, however, the verdict from the computer man is not good and I'm not going to be able to retrieve ANY data off it. The good news is that I backed up my files more recently than I though on my computer's hard drive so I'm only losing 2 and a half chapters. A lot better than I thought it was going to be, so it should only take me a day or two to catch back up

Thanks again