Recover files from flash drive

[dcs.79c]

I hope that it hasn't completely died, but Yosemite doesn't recognize a flash drive when I plug it in. I bought a new flash drive at Best Buy. There are a lot of programs that work on Macs & that claim to recover files from a flash drive. My first choice is a free program. I'm sure that I'll get a lot of recommendations, but what programs are recommended by Apple or are available on the App Store or are recommended by people on this forum? I read elsewhere on the 'net that one should see if disk Utilities or "Apple" > "About this Mac" > "Storage" recognizes the flash drive.

 

[Lifeisabeach]

I hope that it hasn't completely died, but Yosemite doesn't recognize a flash drive when I plug it in. I bought a new flash drive at Best Buy. There are a lot of programs that work on Macs & that claim to recover files from a flash drive. My first choice is a free program. I'm sure that I'll get a lot of recommendations, but what programs are recommended by Apple or are available on the App Store or are recommended by people on this forum? I read elsewhere on the 'net that one should see if disk Utilities or "Apple" > "About this Mac" > "Storage" recognizes the flash drive.

Forget finding a free program. I've never seen file recovery software that is free, at least not for OS X. You can try Disk Drill, which will scan your drive for free and it can show you if anything is recoverable, but you do have to buy a license to do the actual recovery. A number of us have it and it is indeed pretty good. Data Rescue is an alternative that is widely considered to be one of the best data recovery tools available.

 

[dcs.79c]

Forget finding a free program. I've never seen file recovery software that is free, at least not for OS X. You can try Disk Drill, which will scan your drive for free and it can show you if anything is recoverable, but you do have to buy a license to do the actual recovery. A number of us have it and it is indeed pretty good. Data Rescue is an alternative that is widely considered to be one of the best data recovery tools available.

The flash drive has a FAT 32 file format. I have a netbook that has Windows XP on it. Even though FAT 32 is compatible with OS X, it is a Windows native format. I hope that XP will be able to read it.

The drive is plugged into a powered USB hub. My Apple keyboard has 2 USB ports. I've tried plugging the drive into a keyboard USB port & a port on the powered USB hub. I wonder if I'll have a better chance of OS X reading it if I plug the drive directly into one of the USB ports on the back of my mini. I tried to do a clean install of Yosemite by plugging a flash drive into a port on the powered USB hub. It failed. So I plugged the flash drive directly into a USB port on the back of my mini & successfully did a clean install of Yosemite on my mini.

I downloaded & installed Google Drive onto my mini. I plan to do the same on my MacBook Pro. I've already successfully uploaded files to Google Drive from another flash drive.