Question : Problem: USB pen drive inaccessible

Ok, so I have a user who thought it would be wise to only save her work on a USB pen drive. She came in to work this morning and the drive is visible in Windows but when clicked, all that happens is I get a prompt to format the drive. It's impossible to read the drive's contents in either XP or Vista.

I know there are utilities out there but I haven't got time to try lots of freeware that doesn't do the job. Does anyone have any tried and tested solutions to recovering the contents of a USB drive?

If it helps, the drive was freely inserted and removed from an XP system without using the 'Safely remove hardware' option. I suspect this has contributed to the issue.

All constructive advice welcomed.

Answer : Problem: USB pen drive inaccessible

This link:

http://www.pcinspector.de/Sites/smart_recovery/info.htm?language=1

is in English, and is the program I use.

- gurutc