Usb flash memory suddenly not working - is all lost?!?!

[netrate]

I have an issue with a memory stick. I used it last night, saved work on it and it was fine. This morning when I plugged it in, it wasn't recognized and the data is seemingly gone. I have tried using EasyRecover Professional and it says it cannot find out whether it is fat 16, 32, of NTSF. I really need the info on this drive, but I was wondering what my options are. It is a 2 gig stick, generic, a gift for Xmas. I have backed up a lot of the stuff a few days ago, but I have done work on it since then I really don't want to go down the drain. Any ideas?

The USB is recognized by the system, but when I click on the drive letter in Windows Explorer, it tells me it should be formatted. Again worked perfect last night, today not at all...
I have tried it on 4 different computers. I have tried Ubuntu and it doesn't recognize it. I have run win-TESTDISK 6.11.3 and it cannot find the partition or anything! This is crazy, how can everything just be gone? The drive seems to work, but WANTS to be formatted each time it is put in. With TESTDISK 6.11.3 it cannot find a partition but asked to ADD one, I am not sure if I should do this.
I have also tried about 6 trial software for recovery. All say the same thing that there is NO LOGICAL DRIVE, I am not sure what this means in terms of recovering the data...any help would really be appreciated.

[pcimage]

By the sounds of your symptoms and what you have tried so far, your drive is almost certainly suffering from a controller malfunction.

There is nothing you can do with software, the flash chip(s) inside need to be removed and read with a flash reader. Then you have to special software to decode the data held therein.

[netrate]

Well, that isn't what I wanted to hear, but that is reality. Why would the drive still want to be formatted though? I was tempted to format it and see what happens and then try Easy Recovery to unformat it afterwards, but I wanted to exhaust all possibilities first...

[pepe]

format will not help in this case, and hopefuly won't cause more harm...
If the data is important, consult a pro. Starling is in canada:
member3057.html

pepe

[laptokowiec]

Is it possible to format your drive or the system says the drive is empty ?