Vacation pictures gone...

[Sayth]

So my wife and I went away on a very late honey moon. While I do have all my 660 photos that I took, one day we were at a nature type amusement park and purchased a collection of photos they took of us on a 4GB USB flash drive.

Before leaving the resort to fly home I checked and the pictures were great. But I didn't copy them right away.....

Well 2 weeks later I plug the drive in and nothing happens. Light turns on, Windows installs the drivers, then nothing. So I tried my Mac... nothing. I try my ubuntu server... nothing.

So I'm looking for a bit of help. I want to simply run foremost against it to pull out the 23 photos. unfortunately I need a /dev/sdxx location for it. I don't even have that.

here is the dmesg output:

Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911683.424722] usb 1-2: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911683.558733] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=058f, idProduct=1234
Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911683.558746] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911683.558754] usb 1-2: Product: Mass Storage Device
Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911683.558760] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Alcor Micro
Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911683.560124] usb-storage 1-2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911683.560418] scsi10 : usb-storage 1-2:1.0
Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer mtp-probe: checking bus 1, device 8: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:12.2/usb1/1-2"
Mar 16 19:19:32 UbuntuServer mtp-probe: bus: 1, device: 8 was not an MTP device
Mar 16 19:19:33 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911684.560658] scsi 10:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Generic  USB Flash Disk   7.76 PQ: 0 ANSI: 4
Mar 16 19:19:33 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911684.561397] sd 10:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg3 type 0
Mar 16 19:19:33 UbuntuServer kernel: [1911684.568065] sd 10:0:0:0: [sdc] Attached SCSI removable disk

Any commands I run on sdc result in

`/dev/sdc': No medium found

I tried testdisk, gpart, dd, ddrescue, all give me the same "No medium found"

Any ideas?

 

[michalrz]

Can you see the partition/device in the fdisk -l output? After it's plugged in?

Can you paste that section here?

 

[Sayth]

No entry in fdisk. It shows my other 2 hard disks, sda and sdb, but nothing for sdc.

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sdc returns nothing.

 

[michalrz]

Another command that lists storage devices is blkid , but it probably won't be useful.

I googled around (as you've probably did as well) and it seems the error about mtp-probe you posted may indicate a failing USB device or port or even a corrupt partition table.

Also, removing libmtp-runtime might help but to be honest I am way too uncomfortable throwing random commands from forums at you when valuable data is at stake.

The crucial thing is to backup the whole image of this flashdrive.

I would try a different linux box, or booting from a livecd. Then, if you can see your drive there, the tool dd can be used to perform a bit-by-bit copy onto another medium. I can help with that part.

 

[Sayth]

Okay so no luck on another Linux box. I got the same results. Haven't tried a live CD yet.

I did contact the company of the amusement park and they said they should be able to send me my photos. I just have to wait for the appropriate tech guy to come in.

Which kinda creeps me out... After I get my photos I'm gonna ask them how long they keep these on their servers. We live in a surveillance age don't we? Not paranoid.... just curious.

Thanks again for your help. I expect the drive is dead, but I'll stop pulling out my hair until I know if I can get my photos sent to me or not.