Hello, I plugged in a USB stick and the data on there has disappeared! Something like EaseUS is quite expensive, are there alternatives which work? Thanks.
First: if the data are important, stop. Right now. Unplug the drive, put it somewhere safe, note down everything you did, and send it to a professional data recovery outfit. Second, if the data aren't that important, image the drive. You can use ddrescue on Linux, or one of the various Windows-compatible imaging products out there. Then do everything else on a copy of the image, not the drive. Put the drive to one side. For recovering data from the image, I'd recommend the always-reliable combination of TestDisk and PhotoRec. There's a learning curve there, but it's OK - that's why you're working on a copy of the image. If you mess it up, delete the copy and make a new one then try again. But, to reiterate, if the data are important, don't do anything but unplug the drive and send it off to a data recovery specialist.
Thanks. It's strange whats happened, as its bitlocker protected as they have to be for us to use them on work PCs (but it's my own personal drive). It knows it's still protected and allows me to unlock it, but all of the data appears to have gone.
Ooh, that could make things more difficult. I've never tried recovering anything from a Bitlocker-encrypted volume.
Restart your PC with it plugged in and try unlocking through the Bitlocker Control Panel where you'd manage the Bitlocker setup. I know it seems odd, but I had an instance recently where a drive refused to work unless unlocked in the control panel rather than through file explorer.
In that control panel I can only see options to basically turn off the decryption? Once unlocked I can scan it with the free EaseUS, but it then hangs during a scan, but I can see my files there. Photorec doesn't see a thing there.
Just an update, I came back to this recently. I cloned the usb drive to another and it worked right away, the new usb drive contains all of the data with no issues. Wonder how it managed that when the original just wouldn't do a thing!
