I've been using this memory stick for about a year now, got it free from JD, nothing special, don't know the make, it's branded with Adidas and JD.

It's worked fine for me all year, but yesterday I plugged it into the USB on my laptop as usual and this happened...





I clicked properties and apparently it has 0kb. It has a year of college work on it so it is kinda vital I try and retrieve the files on it.

So what I'm asking is if anyone has had this problem and knows how to fix it, or if anyone knows how to fix it anyway ?

Much MUCH appreciated if anyone can help.

Try Recuva

No that didn't work, it said "unable to read boot sector" when I clicked on which drive I wanted to search, it came up with the same formatting message.

Should I format it and then try to retrieve the files?

Try GetDataBack (FAT or NTFS version, depending on your USB stick)

Unfortunately that program is not free, but it does work (and it says also "Get everything back even when the drive's partition table, boot record, Master File Table or root directory is lost or corrupt. ")

Just download it off somewhere, or use the Trial just to make sure it'll do the job (then you can "buy" it )

Oh, you already tried this. Ok, well.....I'd say format, but wait for somebody else who knows what they are talking about

No, I hadn't tried that yet, I wrote the reply as you did I guess. I'm gunna try it now.

Problem with a format is you have to be careful it just deletes data and doesn't actually overwrite it.

TBh it sounds like a corrupt boot sector, which I think would need to be formatted anyway Sorry...

Give R-Studio a try too.