[Hippolas]

I recently had a flash drive (exFat) suddenly go RAW, and recovering the data from it was a nightmare. I triee searching for preventative countermeasures for drives going RAW at random, but truth is I never did find out why it happened in the first place.

I suspected bad sectors as this is actually more of a Micro-SD card in a usb enclosure+adaptor, and it is a bit old (2+ years). However, when using Disk Genius, i got the report of 100% all good (green) sectors, not even a single yellow, so I am skeptical to say the least. I also recently heard that software like checkdisk and DiskGenius was only designed to scan for sectors on full hard disks, external hard disks, and full SSDs, but not flash memory. I don't know the validity of that comment.

I'm not really looking for big solutions anymore, I'm just curious. Can flash drives/ sd cards be scanned for bad sectors? I'm not interested in the question of its repairability, just whether it can be scanned or not.

If anyone wants to follow up, is there something I may have missed on preventing a drive from going RAW? For conext, I did recently do something to the drive that I do not nornally do, which was insert it to an older backup laptop running windows 7 offline, just for a quick file transfer. That is about the time it happened. But I can't really find out much more about the subject of drives suddenly becomming RAW, specifically how or why it could happen in the first place. also, no viruses, no nalware, no sudden ejects from the system, the card does not have a read-only switch, and I don't remove it from the enclosure.

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Hello Hippolas.

 

“Flash drives aren’t hard drives, and don’t

live, or die, by the same rules.”

Hence: buy a new one.

 

Unfortunately tools like chkdsk, scandisk and the like are

unreliable when it comes to scanning flash drives for what on a hard

disk would be called a “surface error”. Flash drives aren’t hard

drives, and don’t live, or die, by the same rules.

https://askleo.com/h..._a_flash_drive/

 

 

Flash drive

 

In order to save your information, flash drives use an electrical signaling power source known as a transistor semiconductor. This includes:

 

Source

Floating gate

Control gate

Drain

https://www.qualityl...-a-flash-drive/

 

 

 

Also \

https://en.wikipedia...ki/Flash_memory

[zep516]

Hello Hippolas.

 

“Flash drives aren’t hard drives, and don’t

live, or die, by the same rules.”

Hence: buy a new one.

 

Unfortunately tools like chkdsk, scandisk and the like are

unreliable when it comes to scanning flash drives for what on a hard

disk would be called a “surface error”. Flash drives aren’t hard

drives, and don’t live, or die, by the same rules.

https://askleo.com/h..._a_flash_drive/

 

 

Flash drive

 

In order to save your information, flash drives use an electrical signaling power source known as a transistor semiconductor. This includes:

 

Source

Floating gate

Control gate

Drain

https://www.qualityl...-a-flash-drive/

 

 

 

Also \

https://en.wikipedia...ki/Flash_memory

[Hippolas]

{Update} This more or less answered some questions. But it also left open more. I wondered if the drive was truely damaged, or if something else was at fault... guess I do sometimes obsess over the reason things happen. So, I wondered about the exFat formatting option, only recently discovering that it has no journaling mode for files. Does that matter though, not sure... So, I decided (after recovering what files I could), to run a new kind of file test using a different memory card after formatting that card to NTFS. What brought on the urge to do so was coming across an unexpectedly good data revovery software. And I had an interesting idea for a test. I suspected that somewhere, the system volume information is what got corrupted to begin with, which is why this hit so hard and dmaged so many files, turnimg the media RAW. So the new plan (for testing purposes) was to fill a new NTFS crad with not so random data, plug it into a safe system, and purpoisly mess with that system volume folder. Did I mention that I was using a backup laptop of Win 7 for this? It was also the same laptop I last used when the first card became RAW. During the test, Windows was not too happy with me trying to access the protected folder. No problem, I'll just safely eject and try it on another laptop. Then the unexpected happened. Upon safely ejecting (with the message to do so showing safe), I immidately hear an error sound with no popup. Curious, I plug the sd card back into the same laptop, and low and behold, the drive is corrupt and RAW. I had intended for the disk to be corrupted AFTER I messed with important drive files, but instead it happened again BEFORE I could actually do so. Kind of a crazy story. I still do not know exactly what specifically is going on here, or why. But I now know the general cause of the corruption. The drive isnt bad. The laptop handling it is. I will never plug an important drive in that system again. I know it was old and only used as a backup, but this makes it more ueseless. TLDR: Laptop from [bleep] corrupts and RAWs all inserted flash media with no warning after eject, making me go crazy until finding out the source.