Problem restoring data from Macrium "Clone".

[Andy G.]

CAN ANYONE HELP!?!?!?

 

Hi All,

 

I was able to clone my laptop 70GB HDD to my 128MB flash drive without a problem using wonderful Macrium Reflect Free Edition.

 

Not long after putting a password on my HP Compaq Presario C552US Notebook PC; i wasn't able to log-on.

 

At this point I was directed by MS to edit my registry profile IDs. But instead of merely only deleting the last (offending) one; I deleted all four of my/the profile IDs in my registry.

 

My Vista OS then went kaput.

 

After numerous System Restores... some giving me hope that all might be well. But despite this/these; I wanted to tweak until everything with my Vista Home Basic edition was like it had been before.. e.g. with the same wallpaper, restored Outlook Mail Folders.

 

So since I had a Macrium Reflect Free edition clone copy of my HDD made only last month 8-15-13; I thought to use this clone copy in combination with my HDD's -Vista Easy Transfer- program, in order to attempt to use this method to restore my missing or hard-to-find/access data(e-mails, documents, pictures/photos, favorites and other settings).

 

this/these action/s ended up erasing all of these from my HDD, and it seemed, until a few hours ago, also from my Macrium Reflect clone copy... but now it may be that this 8GB of data and maybe more got shunted to a subfolder on the/my clone copy...

 

Do You recommend restarting my Macrium Reflect program to see if I can access this data then manually copy/transfer it back to my fixed Vista and HDD???{and, if so, how should I proceed within Macrium?} or should I use/return to attempting to usse Windows Explorer to attempt to access this data???

 

Thanks in advance for any help rendered,

 

Andy

[DennisD]

Hi Andy, and welcome to the forum.

 

Can you clarify something first, and that is the size of the flash drive you cloned your hard drive to?

 

128mb can't be right.

 

If that isn't in fact the size, and it was large enough to take the Macrium Image, how large is the Image, and very important, did you "Verify" it after it's creation?

 

The best way to get data from a Macrium Image is to mount it as a drive, and you can do that from your right click menu. If you right click the Image, the "Explore" item will be highlighted.

 

Choose that option and you will get the Macrium dialogue to mount that Image as a drive.

 

The new drive, which will appear in "My Computer" with the disk letter you select, can be opened, explored and copied from like an ordinary drive.

 

You will be able to copy out any data you wish, although some settings may need registry entries to work again, although I've found from practice that most stuff will work and create the setting over again. Not everything, but most.

 

I can't quite make out exactly what has happened to your Image, so if the above doesn't help we may need to go into more detail.

 

 

EDIT: I've just thought of the obvious. Why didn't you "Restore" the Image in the first instance?

 

So obvious I missed it.

[Alan_B]

I fear that you may have cloned. If only you had imaged.

Please confirm what you did

 

I can advise upon the use of Image backups to restore the operating system to the original drive or to restore to a brand new drive.

I am not aware of anyone here that makes a habit of cloning, but some one may be able to advise.

 

Macrium has two different capabilities :-

 

Backup Image and Restore, which almost never at any time fails, and is a simple SOFTWARE operation which is ideal for the novice and myself,

and I have a 1 TB backup drive which is holding several hundred backups that allow me to restore Windows to any month in the last few years;

 

Clone, which is HARDWARE intensive for those who enjoy hot-swapping their drives,

and have understanding that the disk identities will get messed up if you do not disconnect the source drive at the right time.

I consider Cloning to be a one-way trip into disaster.

The "Destination Disk" receives an identical "Disk Identity" as the "Source Disk",

and if you reboot/power up with identical disks then Windows throws a "hissy fit" and will knock off-line the drive you wanted to use.

Clone is far too much bother for me to think about

Clone consumes a complete drive and you need a long shelf of drives if you make and keep a clone once a month for a few years.

[DennisD]

I fear you may be right Alan.

 

If it is a Clone and not an Image, you can disregard my post above Andy. I don't think we've ever had a member who "Cloned" as opposed to "Imaged" with Macrium, so I automatically slipped into Image advice mode.

 

If that is the case I'll change the topic title which I composed to move your post from that other topic to it's own.

[Andy G.]

Alan and Dennis,

 

Yes, I did, -clone-, not image, my 70GB HDD to my 128GB flash drive; And Yes the drives did get their identities mixed up

I finally opened Macrium, a few days ago, and looked at the Restore command... but settled for a victory, when I found{sensed} my-, missing since my 2 or 3 instances of Windows Vista Easy Transfer And numerous System Restores, -personal data{e-mails, favorites, documents...}

 

the Macrium side menu asked me to pick a file to Restore... but i was afraid to experiment with this.. mostly because i was thinking that Macrium Restore would only work if using the purchased product{not the free edition}

 

My problem now seems to be how do i navigate, this clone on a flash, in order to Copy my old Outlook.pst file, and then Paste it, somewhere on this, my still usable 70GB HDD machine, and then somehow set up a new MS Outlook profile to hopefully point to this copy.. which then, hopefully, might restore all of my recently old e-mail

 

then navigate to/find, my other items; e.g. photos, documents, and then Copy and Paste them over too.

 

my main problem seems to be: how do i navigate/distinguish between and into my Windows Vista Primary visual green-colored folders that contain my/these files..

 

any more thoughts on this issue will be greatly appreciated

 

 

Thank You All Much for the great help so far!!!

 

Andy

 

p.s. Yes Dennis, I did mean 128GB re: my flash drive {not MB}

and yes, the title change of my post was/is good and thanks for moving to up to the top of the discussion

 

and Alan, I always wanted to -clone- my drive as that i thought then it would be a "true" back up

i had thought -imaging- was something incomplete and somehow not as good as cloning

 

thanks again,

 

Andy

[Alan_B]

the Macrium side menu asked me to pick a file to Restore... but i was afraid to experiment with this.. mostly because i was thinking that Macrium Restore would only work if using the purchased product{not the free edition}

Restore should be the same regardless of Free or Purchase.

 

Restore when running under an existing installed Windows is :-

Impossible if you want to restore your existing Windows partition ;

very effective and very similar to restoring via a WinPE Boot Rescue CD ;

practical via a Linux Boot Rescue CD - unless you are unlucky with your hardware - because Linux doe not incorporate all the Drivers that can be included in WinPE.

 

Restore only works with an Image Backup. It should not recognize your Clone drive as an image backup.

My problem now seems to be how do i navigate, this clone on a flash, in order to Copy my old Outlook.pst file, and then Paste it, somewhere on this, my still usable 70GB HDD machine, and then somehow set up a new MS Outlook profile to hopefully point to this copy.. which then, hopefully, might restore all of my recently old e-mail

 

then navigate to/find, my other items; e.g. photos, documents, and then Copy and Paste them over too.

 

my main problem seems to be: how do i navigate/distinguish between and into my Windows Vista Primary visual green-colored folders that contain my/these files..

A successful Clone would have allowed you to disconnect your original HDD and boot and run from the Clone.

The first issue would then have been whether Vista and your hardware allow you to boot from an external flash drive,

and whether you have the patience to live with an operating system that is running from a Flash Drive.

 

Unfortunately the operation was not successful.

The system rebooted with original HDD and clone Flash both connected,

and that led to a series of corruptions of your installed HDD system.

 

You previously said "but now it may be that this 8GB of data and maybe more got shunted to a subfolder on the/my clone copy..."

Please explain exactly what damage was done to your clone.

Do you mean that the 8 GB of data in various folders on the Flash was moved to a different set of folders on the same Flash,

or that the original clone Flash duplicate of the HDD remains and in addition you have an extra 8 GB in this new subfolder ?

and Alan, I always wanted to -clone- my drive as that i thought then it would be a "true" back up

i had thought -imaging- was something incomplete and somehow not as good as cloning

An image is so much safer and more secure and so much more versatile.

Amongst other things, you can verify an image and Macrium will validate all the hash checksums to confirm it can read what was once written.

A clone has no hash checksums and you cannot know if a data bit got lost on the USB / eSATA / SATA / IDE hardware route to the clone,

and you will never know if over the course of time a clone data bit gets lost

(cosmic rays/electrostatic damage/temperature degradation in a flash drive,

vibration/falling of shelf/whatever can go wrong will go wrong in a HDD)

 

M Y A D V I C E

 

Launch Windows Disk management and post a screen shot which shows all the Volume and Disk information on both the HDD and the Flash Drive.

Also post a screen shot of "Windows Vista Primary visual green-colored folders that contain my/these files".

This will assist us with further recovery advice.

 

Further advice will be available once your screen shots have been considered,

and I suggest you wait for that advice before taking further recovery actions that might result in further data loss

 

Meanwhile, whilst waiting for such advice,

I suggest you create a WinPE Boot Recovery CD (unless you already have one created with your latest version).

Running under Windows any "in use" files (no matter how damaged) cannot be replaced by any files that you navigate to in the Flash Drive,

BUT there are no "in use" files when running from a Boot CD,

and WinPE includes a rudimentary Windows Explorer so you would then be able to replace any file without any restriction.

 

If you wish to play safe, before having any accidental losses whilst trying to get your files correctly copied,

you might consider using (getting) an external HDD for backing file backups and even image backups

 

I would suggest that if your HDD has all 70 GB space used up, a Macrium image backup would easily fit into less than 50 GB

and if your Flash has both the original 70 GB plus another growth of 8 GB, then it would fit into less than 55 GB.

You would probably get by with an external 100 GB HDD, but more is better.

 

You might consider starting with one off 500 GB (or even 1 TB) and at a later stage getting a second one,

rather than splashing out on a 2 TB or larger.

If / when you have two externals you can make backups on one and move that to a different room whilst you then use the other external.

Then if your computer burns out and damages one external the other external should survive.

Periodically you replace the older images with the more recent images.

 

Regards

Alan

[DennisD]

Hi Andy.

 

I changed the topic title to Macrium Clone which may prompt contributions from any of the other guys who have experience with cloning.

 

I'll leave you to digest Alan's advice, and simply add a link to the many Macrium discussions on here ...

 

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fforum.piriform.com+Macrium&v=n

 

You'll find that these are probably all about "Imaging", which in my opinion is the way to go in future, and the Macrium Reflect free Home Version is as reliable and solid as the paid one.

[Alan_B]

Additional screen shot request :-

 

Download this Freeware version of TreeSIze. It offers an installer *.exe but I always click and the scroll bar then provides a portable ZIP which I prefer.

https://www.jam-software.de/customers/downloadTrial.php?article_no=80&language=EN&

 

With this you can scan your HDD system partition C:\,

and then use the menu "File" and select "New Instance",

and then use this new instance to scan the Flash drive D:\ or whatever it might be.

 

With both scans side by side you can quickly see the sizes of various folders, with the largest folder at the top.

If any folder is significantly different between the size on HDD relative to size on Flash this would indicate where something has changed,

and clicking on the relevant folder will open up one level to show more detail upon which sub-folders are affected.

 

Hopefully Windows and important subfolders such as Winsxs etc have not been damaged.

 

A screen shot showing the differences might give a quick idea of which regions have been affected.

 

Alan

[Andy G.]

Dear Alan,

 

here are my screen shots... Disk Manager and the Green/blue favorites folders... i will try to get the tree program downloaded and running....

 

Regards,

 

Andy

[Alan_B]

By default Macrium Imaging uses "Intelligent sector copy".

Please proceed up to the point where the Finish button is on the bottom right corner,

and before clicking Finish go to bottom left corner for "Advance Options" and select

"Make an Exact copy ... Deleted files may be recovered."

 

Do this for separate images of both C:\ and F:\

I hope you will not need to depend upon the recovery of deleted files, but a few extra minutes now might save months of anguish later.

 

I notice that F:\ is "basic" and not "removable".

Is your Flash Drive actually an SSD that can physically replace a 2.5" or 3.5" HDD ?

 

Alan

[Andy G.]

Dear Alan,

 

I don't quite understand your post...

 

I have F:\ ; a removable flash drive, not an SSD drive.. i think it is marked "basic" because i did a clone, not an image of C:\ ; my HDD

 

I am afraid now to take this: "Make an Exact copy ... " step... because i don't want to lose any prior saved data..

 

i will try to download the treeview program tomorrow and post a screen shot of that...

 

are you saying that perhaps all my old data is lost?

 

I have a 64GB flash drive in which might fit another clone, so this might be good for an imaging? yet please let me know...

please remember i am hoping for a data recovery and/or restoration{so i don't want to overwrite and hence erase anything... further?}

 

 

sorry it took so long for me to respond as i am an old guy with alot of nothing to do ...

 

 

Please remember that i am interested in restoring my MS Outlook 2007 e-mail that disappeared, first when i deleted my four log-in profile registry entries, and then further when i attempted to restore it using the clone..

 

 

I don't know how to work with Outlook Profiles, Outlook Default Profiles and/or restore the Outlook.pst file especially if varied from different instances or back-ups

 

 

 

I also wish to recover my photos, Documents, internet settings

 

{my 'new' copy of IE won't allow me now to open a menu "send web page/link via e-mail" option linked to my 'new' instance of MS Outlook!!} [[this issue has been resolved by enabling/restoring: the menu and status and command bars [using the IE home tab]]]

 

 

 

I will wait for your go-ahead for me to copy and paste, if necessary, these items, from i guess my clone, where i think they still are, to my HDD

 

 

 

 

all of these files and system and program files, including a few >250, that, before we had talked, I used AVG Undelete to restore; sit somewhere, if Disk Management is to be believed, on both drives[the HDD and its clone].. its just that my Windows Vista Home Basic doesn't see them

 

Also, I now am unable to update my AVG AntiVirus 2013 Free Edition to AVG 2014 because of a Firewall issue and I am also now not able to turn on my Firewall or even my old copy of AVG 2013... Even if AVG wanted me to purchase their pay product.. I am afraid that it too, like AVG 2014 Free, would also not work

 

Warm Regards,

 

Andy

 

[Alan_B]

The "Computer" screenshot shows what it calls Hard Disk Drives (3),

below which is a dividing line with the legend "Devices with Removable Storage (1)"

Below which are removable drives - and you show only the DVD/CD-R/W Drive (E:),

and any normal Flash drives that I am familiar with should also be removable and shown below the line.

"ANDYS MAIN CLONE" is above the line so your computer is saying that your clone is NOT a Removable Flash

 

On my computer I can select either my Flash Drive (F:) or my DVD/CD (L:),

and right click for a context menu with many items, including "Format..." followed by "Eject"

The context menus for my SSD (C:) and HDD (E:) etc do NOT include "Eject".

 

Does your Clone (F:) context menu include "Eject".

 

Is your Clone plugged into a USB2 port ?

Can you give a link to what you bought so I may read the capabilities of this Flash Drive ?.

 

I am afraid now to take this: "Make an Exact copy ... " step... because i don't want to lose any prior saved data..

Please do not fear the consequences of a correctly performed "Make an Exact copy ... ",

but do continue to fear further loss of data due to mistaken actions.

i will try to download the treeview program tomorrow and post a screen shot of that...

are you saying that perhaps all my old data is lost?

I do not know what may have been lost.

Please note that any old data that may be lost is now in "Free space" and liable to be overwritten when the next file is created.

This old lost data MAY be recovered with Recuva or other competing utilities that we are not allowed to discuss here.

The purpose of "Make an Exact copy ..." is that it not only backups up all the files that are NOT lost,

but it also backs up the Free Space and all the old lost data.

By ticking this particular box you simply give yourself extra recovery options that are less reliable in quality but may be better than nothing when all else fails.

 

Comparing the Treeview displays might show that C:\ has got 10 GB less free space than F:\ because C:\ now has 10 GB of extra "Easy Transfer" backups,

Do you happen to know how much free space existed on drives C:\ and F:\ before you used "Vista Easy Transfer- program" ?

Comparing the Treeview displays might show that C:\ has got 10 GB less free space than F:\ because C:\ now has 10 GB of extra "Easy Transfer" backups,

and then we can guess and hope.

I have a 64GB flash drive in which might fit another clone, so this might be good for an imaging? yet please let me know...

please remember i am hoping for a data recovery and/or restoration{so i don't want to overwrite and hence erase anything... further?}

Yes, that flash drive would probably hold the image backup of either C:\ or F:\,

but may be insufficient for both.

 

In my view your C:\ system is corrupted by :-

Vista going wrong and causing you to attempt system changes that caused further damage;

Followed by further damage inflicted by what Microsoft called their "Vista Easy Transfer- program".

 

Your F:\ Clone is your best hope - Vista's initial errors should have had no impact,

and the only collateral damage might have been misdirected writing to F:\ instead of C:\

 

If you make an image backup of F:\,

perhaps to your 64 GB Flash,

then with a WinPE Boot Rescue CD you can restore that backup to either the existing or a brand new and empty internal HDD (which is hopefully quite cheap).

Please DO NOT RESTORE TO THE EXISTING HDD WITHOUT first also "Make an Exact copy ... " Image backup of this existing HDD.

With just a little bit of luck your Laptop will boot-up.

and with a lot more luck your outlook profiles and photos etc will live again.

 

You can avoid the cost of another internal HDD by getting an external HDD of at least 200 GB, and partition this with perhaps 100 GB of Unallocated space.

The partition on this external is for

one "Make an Exact copy ... " Image backup of both the C:\ and D:\ partitions of the internal Drive, and

one "Make an Exact copy ... " Image backup of both the F:\ Clone.

 

The purpose of the Unallocated space is to allow the WinPE Boot Rescue CD to demonstrate its capability to restore the image backup of the Clone F:\ into that space creating partition G:\.

If Treesize shows that G:\ is the same as F:\ then all is good.

I am a retired electronic specialist and computer hardware and software designer and never expect anything good from a computer.

 

Alan

[Andy G.]

here are my treeview screenshots:

[Andy G.]

Alan;

 

I'm not above Copy and Pasting my photos/docs/emails back onto my C:\ or if still on my C:\ to my current user name directories.. i.e.; they don't all have to fall into place, so to speak, the way they necessarily were.. such a magic outcome might now be impossible anyway since i changed user names a bit etc.

 

Andy

[Alan_B]

Copy and Paste may work, but you could dig yourself into a deeper hole, in which case you might regret it if you do not first make an image backup.

 

Please note that I have no knowledge of outlook, other than its PST file can be stuck near the end of the partition and prevent Windows from shrinking itself,

 

I suggest that you start a separate topic with suitable title to get advice upon restoring Outlook files and Profiles,

since experts on such subjects may never look at a topic related to Macrium Clone/Image.

 

Similarly I suggest you start a separate topic about damage cause by accidents with "Vista Easy Transfer- program",

Experts who have had their fingers burnt may be able to advise upon any recovery options and capabilities,

or failing that they might advise what things get deleted or duplicated or relocated and to where.

 

All I can do in this topic is advise upon preserving all information in Image backups which can be used to undo any further damage caused should Copy and Paste aim at the wrong targets.

 

Please explain the circumstances under which you obtained two views of C:\.

 

One view shows :-

the same 26.4 MB in the Recycle Bin which you have in the clone,

monster 8,3220 MB of System Volume Information,

and 205 MB of Programdata

 

whilst the other view shows :-

7697 MB from_old_computer

5658 MB Users

and 1024 MB of ProgramData

0.0 MB in the Recycle Bin ;

Exclamations against the bottom four items,

and no access to System Volume Information.

 

Did you log into one profile with Admin authority for one screen shot,

and log into another profile without such authority for the other ?

Have you any other profiles available with different views ?

 

Please try clicking on the wedge shaped pointer on the left of ProgramData folder

and this will expand that folder to show its subfolders.

Do this to each instance of Tree View.

One (or more) of these subfolders will be significantly larger in one instance than in the other instnace,

and you can click again to expand as much as you need to identify what application(s) are responsible for the difference between 1024 MB and 205 MB.

 

Alan

[Andy G.]

sorry if you're upset regarding previous quoted post as i haven't mastered this posting system yet

[hazelnut]

Quoted post removed.

 

Don't worry about it Andy, you'll get the hang of posting

[Andy G.]

Alan,

 

here are more screenshots:

[Alan_B]

Suggestion :-

For any future screen shots you can reduce the width of the treeSize display,

and if for any particular folder expansion you could place the C:\ display adjacent to the corresponding F:\ display and create one screen shot showing both displays,

that would allow me to see both C:\ and F:\ side by side in the same TAB on my browser.

 

C:\ has almost 11 GB extra data than F:\ in System Volume Information.

I suspect this is due to System Restore Points,

and if you restored your system to the earliest available Restore Point then in theory this will undo all the changes which it has monitored.

If and when you try that, stand by for a bumpy ride,

you might find you are worse of and then you could be thankful for a macrium image backup to restore the current state.

 

Under C:\from_old_computer you have 7697 MB,

This probably holds backups that could have been created when your computer first went bad,

or backups and "work-in-progress" when you were using "Vista Easy Transfer- program"

If you expand this we might get an idea of what it holds.

I will not have any clue about the relevance of or how to use that 7697 MB of data,

but I am sure there are experts around that can advise you.

 

Under "F:\Users" you have 14,207 MB

Under "C:\Users" you have 6431 MB

If you expand both of these by one level you will see the cause of the difference.

It is quite possible that F:\ is showing many user profiles, and C:\ is omitting some.

 

I know that as administrator on my XP Laptop I had full access to all system files and all my profile,

but no access at all to other user files -

EXCEPTING

a Macrium image backup ensures that every file in every profile is backed up,

and If I then mount the image backup as P:\ and tick the box "Enable Access to Restricted Folders",

then I could use TreeSize to fully explore P:\

 

Your Clone F:\ was created by Macrium to similarly include everything.

It might be worth mounting an image of C:\ as P:\ and running TreeSize on P:\

You might find more user profiles than you can observe direct on C:\

 

Under "F:\ProgramData\Microsoft" you have 202 MB

Under "C:\ProgramData\Microsoft" you have 836 MB

If you expand both of these by one level you should identify the cause of the 634 MB difference.

 

I understand that in theory a Flash Drive may have a Partition Table which could hold 4 primary partitions,

but that it cannot have an extended partition table to accommodate extra logical partitions.

In Practice Windows Disk management does not let me create more than one partition on a Flash Drive,

and a third party partition manager attempts to do this but with disappointing results.

I am fairly sure that when no disasters occur with Outlook or "Vista Easy Transfer- program",

you could Clone C:\ to F:\ and your one partition would be good,

but I fear that the MBR might be "distorted" due to Flash Drive technology limitations,

in which case cloning C:\ from F:\, or alternatively Image backup of F:\ restored back to C:\,

would give a good partition but the MBR might fail to boot up,

in which case you would need the WinPE Boot Rescue CD to implement "MBR Repair"

 

I think that exhausts my ability to advise on how to determine what is different between C:\ and F:\,

and how to make image backups that should allow an easy recovery to the existing state if anything else goes wrong.

 

I am unable to advise upon the relevance of the differences between C:\ and F:\ and what to do for Outlook etc.,

but there are experts around that can take it from here.

 

Regards

Alan

[Andy G.]

Yes Alan,

 

Thank-you for this detailed explanation. I think this explanation really explains what is going on accurately. I guess that I had a unrealistic picture of what 2012 large flash drive technology was/is capable of. I purchased these two flash drives in July 2012. They are both labeled "Fantom Drives" by? "Databank" {one 128GB and one 64GB}. My computer is a WinVista computer, and I had no difficulty, making an, again, truly wonderful Macrium, Reflect, clone of, it, and its 1 1/2 year old 70GB 2.5" HDD... using the 128GB drive. But I had great trouble making a clone of my landlord's WinXP 8 year old 40GB 3.5" HDD on the 64GB flash drive. I was directed to, and had to repeatedly go into Disk Management and reformat repeatedly, this flash drive, after/when Macrium Reflect, and another cloning program both returned multiple error messages when I attempted to clone this 8 year old 40GB HDD. Ultimately this 8 year old 40GB HDD soon crashed, with all its data, maybe now gone, after the CHKDSK program crashed, and/so I truncated it(CHKDSK).

 

I -will- make an -Image- of C:\ using the/my 64GB flash drive and then a WinPE Boot Rescue CD{I'll look up on the web how to do this} to try/an "MBR Repair"

 

Thanks again,

 

Andy

[Andy G.]

Hi all,

 

I'm back... with good news: I was finally able to solve my pen drive problem using the link below

 

please read my posting below:

 

 

 

Re: cloned a 80G HDD to a 128G USB Flash stick


Nov 29, 2014

this link helped me:

http://www.techspot.com/community/to...4/#post-875300

Andy


----- Original Message -----
From: Andy 
Sent: Friday, November 28, 2014 6:16 PM
Subject: cloned a 80G HDD to a 128G USB Flash stick

hi all,

happy holidays, etc.

this is an old issue, yet i am still working on it

in July 2013; I cloned my 80G HDD onto a 128G USB Flash stick

in Sept. 2013; I had a data loss...

so, I thought to recover my data using this 128G clone...

I put this 128G Flash stick into my computer, and it showed up as a Local drive, yet was inaccessible and with its LED flashing incessantly...
{this was after, I treated this 128G USB flash stick as if it were a whole computer, and I then attempted to use/misused Win Vista's EasyTransfer program in a failed attempt to restore my lost data }

I later ran CHKDSK /f /r on it, and Chkdsk repaired and/or deleted about 7 "attributes" files

after which, this 128G Flash, only shows up as a Removable Storage(not Local) drive.. and remains locked/data inaccessible yet without the flashing LED

the USB drive, when I clicked on it in My Computer, would give the/an error message "Insert drive into H: drive"... Insert? a drive? into my tiny USB drive? which isn't even a CD or DVD drive? ... I tried all the free home remedy data recovery tools that I could find... then I snail-mailed this thumb drive to my computer whiz baby brother... finally, I purchased {for $99.}, and downloaded Seagate's data recovery tool, and had my brother return the drive... this was when I found the link above and it's freeware DriveCleanUp program, and this solved my issue 

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what I think was/still is "the problem"/locked drive issue... is that the clone looks for the same C:\ assignation as my HDD{which, btw, I had been able to upgrade to 320G}

the problem now, I guess, is where can I find an old XP or Vista computer, to fool around with changing the C:\ drive letter?? [as I'm afraid to experiment on this my only one of my two working <Vista> machines]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
^^^^^^
this wasn't the problem... my issue was caused by left-over USB Flash storage and other USB drivers which once installed were never removed

the freeware DriveCleanUp program, linked in the link, and properly installed{please study the instructions in the link} should help you with this issue... it helped me...





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any thoughts appreciated,

Andy

 

 

(I did use my 7 System Recovery CDs in Jan. 2014 to reset my machine to its factory default settings... my computer was then "like new" yet I lost even more of my old data)

 

will advise further regarding further restoration attempts of my old data