[Tokyoite]

Suddenly today a USB memory stick (with important data on it, of course, which I was too stupid to back up anywhere, of course) won't mount on either of the Macs I normally use. (Both Macs are running Snow Leopard.) The drive doesn't show up in Disk Utility. If I start up with the stick inserted, the little red light on it comes on and stays on.

A little Googling found reference to something called USB Prober that might help, but it comes as part of Developer Tools and I can't find out to get those. There doesn't seem to be anything that came with my Mac that would allow me at access a drive that won't mount.

Please help!

[bastion]

Tokyoite, on 10 May 2012 - 05:24 AM, said:

Suddenly today a USB memory stick (with important data on it, of course, which I was too stupid to back up anywhere, of course) won't mount on either of the Macs I normally use. (Both Macs are running Snow Leopard.) The drive doesn't show up in Disk Utility. If I start up with the stick inserted, the little red light on it comes on and stays on.

A little Googling found reference to something called USB Prober that might help, but it comes as part of Developer Tools and I can't find out to get those. There doesn't seem to be anything that came with my Mac that would allow me at access a drive that won't mount.

Please help!

Restarting should have the same effect as USB Prober, so if that didn't work I wouldn't bother hunting down the tool.

I'm curious:
You say if you start up with it inserted "the little red light comes on." What happens if you insert it after startup?
When did you last use it on either machine, and have you applied any OS updates to either since then?
Do you have access to any other machine besides those two that you could try?
If you open System Profiler you should be able to find a list of USB devices attached to your machine. You say it doesn't show up in Disk Utility, but it would be interesting to see if the system acknowledges it as a live device at all.

Other than the possibility of a software update that's incompatible with the device, the fact that both machines suddenly were unable to read it strongly suggests that the problem is with the USB device itself.

[Martian]

Over the years, I have had two USB flash drives whose failure modes prevented them from mounting on any Mac but would still work on a Windows PC. Your data may still be retrievable on a PC (after which you should just destroy the drive). My old experience may have just been a Mac System 9 weakness but Windows may be worth a last resort try.

(One of those two drives had been a tragic victim of a jeans pocket ride through a Maytag washer)

This post has been edited by Martian: 10 May 2012 - 06:53 AM

[Tokyoite]

bastion, on 10 May 2012 - 06:36 AM, said:

Tokyoite, on 10 May 2012 - 05:24 AM, said:

Suddenly today a USB memory stick (with important data on it, of course, which I was too stupid to back up anywhere, of course) won't mount on either of the Macs I normally use. (Both Macs are running Snow Leopard.) The drive doesn't show up in Disk Utility. If I start up with the stick inserted, the little red light on it comes on and stays on.

A little Googling found reference to something called USB Prober that might help, but it comes as part of Developer Tools and I can't find out to get those. There doesn't seem to be anything that came with my Mac that would allow me at access a drive that won't mount.

Please help!

Restarting should have the same effect as USB Prober, so if that didn't work I wouldn't bother hunting down the tool.

I'm curious:
You say if you start up with it inserted "the little red light comes on." What happens if you insert it after startup?
When did you last use it on either machine, and have you applied any OS updates to either since then?
Do you have access to any other machine besides those two that you could try?
If you open System Profiler you should be able to find a list of USB devices attached to your machine. You say it doesn't show up in Disk Utility, but it would be interesting to see if the system acknowledges it as a live device at all.

Other than the possibility of a software update that's incompatible with the device, the fact that both machines suddenly were unable to read it strongly suggests that the problem is with the USB device itself.

If I insert it after startup, the light on the thumb drive doesn't come on at all.

System Profiler DOES recognize the drive. But it won't mount.

I tried today having the Windows-based IT guys at my office take a look at it, but no go. They didn't hold out much hope for retrieving the data. I'm looking into data retrieval centers, but this is Tokyo and they're pretty expensive. I guess it's a question of how much it's worth to me!

[Tokyoite]

Martian, on 10 May 2012 - 06:46 AM, said:

Over the years, I have had two USB flash drives whose failure modes prevented them from mounting on any Mac but would still work on a Windows PC. Your data may still be retrievable on a PC (after which you should just destroy the drive). My old experience may have just been a Mac System 9 weakness but Windows may be worth a last resort try.

(One of those two drives had been a tragic victim of a jeans pocket ride through a Maytag washer)

Unfortunately, the Windows guys at my office had no better luck with it.

[EGM]

Tokyoite, on 11 May 2012 - 05:06 AM, said:

...I'm looking into data retrieval centers, but this is Tokyo and they're pretty expensive...

This may not be much consolation, but that's not unique to Tokyo.

[bastion]

Tokyoite, on 11 May 2012 - 05:06 AM, said:

System Profiler DOES recognize the drive. But it won't mount.

That's interesting. Can you show us what SP says for it? It sounds like it's not even recognizing it as a valid storage device. If it had just gotten its formatting screwed up or something you'd at least have the option to format it.

[Tokyoite]

bastion, on 11 May 2012 - 07:21 AM, said:

Tokyoite, on 11 May 2012 - 05:06 AM, said:

System Profiler DOES recognize the drive. But it won't mount.

That's interesting. Can you show us what SP says for it? It sounds like it's not even recognizing it as a valid storage device. If it had just gotten its formatting screwed up or something you'd at least have the option to format it.

SP says:

MF-YU :

Product ID: 0x1a00
Vendor ID: 0x13fe (Phison Electronics Corp.)
Version: 1.00
Serial Number: 076B1095481E
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer:
Location ID: 0xfd310000 / 4
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 200

[bastion]

Tokyoite, on 11 May 2012 - 05:41 PM, said:

bastion, on 11 May 2012 - 07:21 AM, said:

Tokyoite, on 11 May 2012 - 05:06 AM, said:

System Profiler DOES recognize the drive. But it won't mount.

That's interesting. Can you show us what SP says for it? It sounds like it's not even recognizing it as a valid storage device. If it had just gotten its formatting screwed up or something you'd at least have the option to format it.

SP says:

MF-YU :

Product ID: 0x1a00
Vendor ID: 0x13fe (Phison Electronics Corp.)
Version: 1.00
Serial Number: 076B1095481E
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer:
Location ID: 0xfd310000 / 4
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 200

That's the list of information it shows me for an unmounted flash drive. Except for S/N and Mfr, I get the same list from an off-brand barcode reader. That's just the basic USB information.

The interesting thing is that if I search for that vendor and product ID I get thousands of results and most of them seem to be problem reports. Granted unhappy people are more vocal than happy ones - no one is going to be spontaneously posting their pleasure that their NAND drive works today - it still seems noteworthy.

[Tokyoite]

bastion, on 12 May 2012 - 02:16 AM, said:

Tokyoite, on 11 May 2012 - 05:41 PM, said:

bastion, on 11 May 2012 - 07:21 AM, said:

Tokyoite, on 11 May 2012 - 05:06 AM, said:

System Profiler DOES recognize the drive. But it won't mount.

That's interesting. Can you show us what SP says for it? It sounds like it's not even recognizing it as a valid storage device. If it had just gotten its formatting screwed up or something you'd at least have the option to format it.

SP says:

MF-YU :

Product ID: 0x1a00
Vendor ID: 0x13fe (Phison Electronics Corp.)
Version: 1.00
Serial Number: 076B1095481E
Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec
Manufacturer:
Location ID: 0xfd310000 / 4
Current Available (mA): 500
Current Required (mA): 200

That's the list of information it shows me for an unmounted flash drive. Except for S/N and Mfr, I get the same list from an off-brand barcode reader. That's just the basic USB information.

The interesting thing is that if I search for that vendor and product ID I get thousands of results and most of them seem to be problem reports. Granted unhappy people are more vocal than happy ones - no one is going to be spontaneously posting their pleasure that their NAND drive works today - it still seems noteworthy.

Not a huge surprise -- it was a free giveaway USB drive! lol