I use a usb KEY to SAVE my data at university, yesterday after i saved 3 of my final pieces it conked out on me.

After hours of trying i finally got my pc to recognise it even exsisted but now it says i need to format the disk and that there is an 8mb partition there and no work. As this is a 1gb usb key this has me very worried.

Is there any chance anyone would know how to solve this problem? If i format it is there any way of restoring the data or is it already LOST?

I cant find any solutions for it so far so can anyone shed some light on what i need to do?

ThanksTry Recuva...

Do NOT format it...as your data will get harder and harder to retrieve.

Also try it in another PC as well.Its obviously too late for this now but do you safely eject the media or do you just YANK it out when your done?

99% of the time youll be fine just yanking it but trust me they do corrupt occasionally. I worked for years with devices that used SD cards for storage and I would get lazy/busy and not safely eject and at least a few a day would need a format and I would LOSE the data on them.

This seems more prevalent in Windows systems with their "delayed write" way of saving to external drives. There is a way to configure a drive to not use delayed write. I believe its under properties when you right click on the drive.

Good luck