# Recovering Data From A USB Flash Drive

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovering-data-from-a-usb-flash-drive/285715>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [January 20, 2005, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovering-data-from-a-usb-flash-drive/285715 "2005-01-20T13:55:58Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Amp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Amp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amp)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2005, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovering-data-from-a-usb-flash-drive/285715/1 "2005-01-20T13:55:58Z")

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Real quick, my boss has a USB flash drive that just went kaput on him. Whenever you try to save or read from the disk an error meesage pops up saying the stick needs to be formatted. Any type of software out there that can recover the files on that disk before we re-format it? Thanks.

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**Author:** ![tagos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@tagos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tagos)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2005, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovering-data-from-a-usb-flash-drive/285715/2 "2005-01-20T13:57:59Z")

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> [@Amp](#):
>
> Real quick, my boss has a USB flash drive that just went kaput on him. Whenever you try to save or read from the disk an error meesage pops up saying the stick needs to be formatted. Any type of software out there that can recover the files on that disk before we re-format it? Thanks.

[http://lists.gpick.com/pages/File~Data\_Recovery.htm](http://lists.gpick.com/pages/File~Data_Recovery.htm)

Try here - never used any of them but they claim to work.

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**Author:** ![igloorex](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/858c86/32.png) [@igloorex](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/igloorex)\
**Post date:** [January 20, 2005, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/recovering-data-from-a-usb-flash-drive/285715/3 "2005-01-20T19:22:43Z")

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this worked for me…

I had a USB drive that got somewhat corrupted and wouldcrash my mac whenever I tried to access it. Then I loaded it in a windows machine and was able to copy all the data off of it.

As a recent “switcher” to Mac, I was fairly shocked to find Windows being more stable than Mac, but that’s how it was.

So, try a different OS if all else fails.