Recovering data from damaged USB stick

[Jimbo Mahoney]

Here's the scenario:

MS Word crashed while writing to the USB stick.
When plugging in the USB stick, it now appears as an unformatted drive.

Here's what I know and what I've tried so far:

File system = FAT32

Programs tried =

Photorec
TestDisk
Recuva
ZeroAssumptionRecovery (ZAR)
EasyDrive Data Recovery
iCare Data Recovery
PC Inspector
GetDataBack for FAT
DiskInternals FAT Recovery


Here's what's happening:

Some programs can see the files and directories (those in bold; some can't find anything.

So far, none of the programs can recover useable data. Although the file names, document type and size look reasonable, they are all corrupted when I try to open them (typically PDF; doc; jpg):

Any advice on where to go from here or what the problem could be?
Any other info I can provide to help?

I haven't yet tried formatting the drive and then recovering - some sites have suggested this and an advanced option of PhotoRec offers something along this line too. I've been paranoid about doing anything to the drive except reading it so far.

Thanks all.

PS - This is not my drive and I've already learned the backup lesson. I fear this is going to be my friend's first and only lesson in keeping backups!

 

[Vimes]

What I would suggest, if possible, is to make a "raw" copy of the stick and put it away and then work on that copy - thus you will still have the original as it is now.

I can't really help you but, in the past, I have had some success with....

http://www.krollontrack.co.uk/software/easyrecovery/

and....

http://www.easeus.com/datarecoverywizard/

best of luck.