Question : Problem: USB stick of pictures is correupted.  Please help.

OK here's my problem:

An 8GB Kingston USB stick was sent to my from my friend in china.  When he sent it, it contained 5GB of pictures and videos taken on a Canon camera.  There were loaded on the memory stick off his laptop which he bought in America.

When I received the USB stick and plugged it in, most of the files were unreadable and simply not there.  Instead of having two folders of pictures (as was originally loaded on the stick), here's what I have on the stick at the minute:

A folder called ".Trashes", containing 64 pictures, all of which are unreadable.  I recognise the filenames of these to be from the first folder of pictures.  This is a hidden folder.
A folder called "Tor_Browser_CCC_Edition", containing the same files as the ".Trashes" folder, but still unreadable and also a hidden folder.
A file called "._.Trashes", with no extension, and 4KB in size.
A file called ".DS_Store", no extension, 7KB.

The original two folders are stil there, and also their subfolders, but the contents of these are there in some cases, unreadable in others cases, sometimes in a folder they shouldn't be, and sometimes just a blank folder.

So, all in all, I have about 200 pictures that are untouched in their original form, but these aren't the pictures that I really want, and there should be around 1000 pictures and videos in total.

If I highlight every item on the root of the drive and go to the properties, it says that there is 1.12GB of data, but when I go to the properties of the drive itself it says that there is 5GB of space taken up, which is about right.

I have tried one or two Data Recovery suites, but they cannot give more than I already have.

The stick is FAT32.

This was originally sent to me not long after the Olympics, and I know that the authorities weren't very keen on CDs and memory sticks being sent in the couple of months following the games.

Does this look to anyone else as though, somewhere between Beijing and the UK, the stick has been put in an Apple Mac, and had its contents deleted??

Can anyone help me or tell me of a software that could help me.  Thanks

Answer : Problem: USB stick of pictures is correupted.  Please help.

If the content was deleted then the space used would match. It seems more to be one of two possible things. First, Did your friend verify the content of the usb key before sending it to you? I mean did they copy the data and then go into the usb key and verify the data as being copied on the key? Second, The key could be damaged somehow and this will make data recovery very difficult. I am leaning more towards the first. Sometimes when copying large amounts of data onto usb keys at once, the data copy can become corrupted. It shows as being "filled up" on the key but no or only unreadable data is actually present. There i sone last possibility but it is almost not worth mentioning. Have you tried the key on another PC? There could be some issue with your PC and the key not being read properly. This is a shot in the dark and I doubt it is the case but worth researching at any rate. Good luck =)