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Data recovery experts have access to a great many specialized tools for finding and retrieving lost data from just about any type of memory, disk drive, or storage media. This article focuses on how to use free data recovery tools on flash memory products.
The important point to remember with any data recovery is that the sooner you try to find the files the better. With flash memory, if you continue to make use of the device then your deleted/lost/formatted files will be overwritten by any new files being saved to the product.
One saving grace of flash memory is that it runs on the FAT-32 file system – the same one used in Windows and most hard drives. Just as many computer maintenance programs are built with standard systems in mind (i.e. built for use with Windows/Linux), data recovery tools are also standardized and target specific file system. So the key is to pick a data recovery application that supports FAT-32 so that it can read the flash memory.
Some freeware options work just as well as commercial options with PC Inspectors Smart Recover, Photo Rec and Recuva being three user-friendly, free options.
Once the file recovery tool is installed and running they all work by scanning a drive of your choosing. For flash memory the file allocation table (FAT) is read to check the index of documents and associated data clusters on the device.
Deleted files will still have an entry in the FAT, and the data clusters will still be in memory (only the directory location is cleared in the FAT). This means data recovery software can easily find your documents and list them back to you.
If you formatted a USB flash device then the FAT will be emptied of document references but the data clusters will still remain (they are labeled as reusable, so in time newly saved documents will reuse the clusters). The recovery software then simply lists the files found for you to copy to a new location.
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