Thumb Drive Recovery

I had all of my R&B files on an 8GB thumb drive.  I've backed it up but not for a long time.  Unfortunately Carbonite doesn't back up thumb drives.

Yesterday, for the second time, the drive was suddenly totally blank and when I tried to access it I was told that it was not formatted and should formatting begin.  NO

I had previously bought a program specifically for this situation, it is called "BadCopy Pro", it cost $40.

I ran BadCopy and it recovered most of my files, 2,398 of them!  Unfortunately it doesn't recover the file names so now I have "File1.aaa through File 2398.aaa"  the recovered file does include the aaa  file extension which included DOC, JPG, GIF, and mostly PDF.

After recovering all the files I threw that thumb drive in the trash and ordered a replacement at NEWEGG for $6, shipping included.  Wish I had done that after the first crash.

Now I'm looking for the January board and general meeting minutes which I completed yesterday at the library and was getting ready to post.

The moral of the story is that, no matter how carefully you back things up a crash can always catch you napping.

1) BACK UP EARLY AND OFTEN.
2) IF A DRIVE FAILS ONCE THROW IT AWAY BECAUSE IT WILL FAIL AGAIN.

Jerry