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Recently, my USB memory stick was not detected when I attached it to the computer. Previously, it worked just fine. But then no drive was popping up neither on Linux nor Windows.

I used the dosfsck and testdisk command to fix the file system and restore the partition table, but it did not work out. The memory stick now shows up as a drive, but it is completely empty. None of my former files is present.

The USB drive has a physical capacity of 4 GB. KDE's file manager Dolphin claims that the drive now has a total size of 4 GB, too. However, it also shows that 1.8 GB are in use, even though there are no files visible.

I suppose the file system is still messed up. 1.8 GB is about the size of all files that I had previously stored on the flash drive. How can I fix the file system or partition table to restore my files?

The drive is not locked and still writable.

user1438038
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    Flash drives are among the least reliable of modern storage media. Add to that the possibility they may be lost, stolen, or physically damaged. They are not sufficiently reliable for primary storage of important files but should be used primarily as a transport media. Drives can fail at any time, typically without warning or apparent cause. All files of any importance should have at least 1 backup copy, 2 or more copies if they are of particular importance. Data recovery methods cannot be relied on. Sorry, can't help with recovery. – LMiller7 Dec 30 '16 at 05:54
  • Thanks for adding these known facts. However, the major weakness is the file system here rather than the portable device. – user1438038 Dec 30 '16 at 16:09
  • Likely the drive has hardware problems that are preventing the file system from working properly. – LMiller7 Dec 30 '16 at 16:40
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    The weakness is not the file system, the weakness is the device itself, same for SD cards or USB sticks. See http://superuser.com/questions/1125282/what-can-i-do-if-my-usb-flash-drive-is-write-protected-or-read-only or http://superuser.com/a/854645/347380 – Tetsujin Dec 30 '16 at 17:02
  • Your symptom is different from the proposed duplicate, but the answer is pretty much the same. There are a few ways flash drives fail. Some are more recoverable, temporarily, but the device shouldn't be relied on. You can try a low-level file recovery program to see if any of your old files can be scraped off. – fixer1234 Dec 30 '16 at 19:08

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