I purchased an IITRONICS hardware device about a year ago and it is both an USB storage

device (pen drive) and a MP3 Player capable of storing 1GB of memory. I have been using this ever

since to store my music collection and most importantly my coursework for school, i have never

encountered any problems with the device. But yesterday i connected the device to my computer and it

failed to load and whenever i tried to access it an error message would occur stating "The disk in

drive E is not formatted. Do you want to format it now?". I chose not to format it as i have

previously formatted a CD-RW and it erased all of its data and i didnt want to erase the data on my

USB device, so i rebooted the computer and tried again but the same message came up and it still

wouldnt allow me to view or access any of the files and folders stored on the device. I then tried

to connect the device to the other computers in my household but it still didnt work which showed

the the problem was with the pen drive, not my computer. I havent installed anything on my computer

within the last few days and i run regular virus checks on my computer so the problem cant be to do

with bad installation or virusses.

I am sure that files stored on the device have not been lost as I am still able to listen to

all my music stored on it through its MP3 Playing capabilities while it is not connected to my

computer, and i am desperate to access the files stored on the device as i need to edit few of my

courseworks on there and hand them in by the end of this week. I have also noticed something else,

when i check the properties of the device through "My Computer" it displays the used space, free

space and capacity all as "0 bytes" and the file system has been somehow changed from "FAT" to

"RAW". I have taken exceptional care of the storage device and have no idea how this fault to the

drive has occured but despite this i am sure that there is still hope of recovering my files stored

on there as the audio files can be seen and accessed through its MP3 playing capabilities. I

desperately and urgently need to access my coursework on the pen drive so could someone please help

me out and provide a solution for my problem?

Thanks in advance!!!!

It does amaze me that so many people rely on one copy of important files. In your case, one copy that can be easily lost or misplaced, in addition to the kind of issues you now have. You may have improperly removed the device, which can cause your problem.

Enough lecturing, you can try using a live verion of Linux, like Knoppix to attempt file recovery. Don't be sure the files are there but hopefully they are. If so the issue is a corrupted file system.

Knoppix works differently than Windows, therefore may be able to access the files to copy them. Google for Knoppix. You will need a broadband connection as Knoppix is 700MB.

no i havent improperly removed the device and is it possible to run knoppix while running windows xp?

It's a flash drive, they are only meant to be used so many times. You really should back up your files.

As for recovery. Try putting the flash drive in a mac and see if it will access the files, or even a Windows 98 machine. In the end, if you can not get access to the files then you may be out of luck.

Knoppix is downloaded and then burned to CD. You then boot to the CD and run from there.