If a flash drive goes bad—that is, any computer that you plug it into tells you that it needs to be

[raccoon]

formatted—is there any way data can be recovered from it?

edited to add: also, is there anything in particular that causes this?

[liberal N proud]

1. Never had one go bad

But I am guessing there is little change of retrieving your files.

[Warren Stupidity]

2. There is likely someway, but it is going to cost you.

There are companies that specialize in disk data recovery, I'm sure theyve branched out into flash drives as well. Google disk data recovery.

[raccoon]

3. thanks, Warren. In this case, the juice isn't worth the squeeze. nt

[ManiacJoe]

4. Sectors go bad on both hard drives and flash drives.

If you can live without the data, doing a deep format of the flash drive should map out the bad sectors and leave the rest usable.

[Mnpaul]

5. I've had good luck with iolo Search and Recover

It worked for me several times on two different flash drives. I think they have a free trial. If the computer can see the flash drive, it will probably work to recover at least some of the files. I liked it so much I paid $30 for a year of the full version. It will search for certain file types if you wish. The program can image a whole HD and you can even set it up to image your OS HD in real time. It has a simple interface and is easy to use. I tried on on one of my camera's flash cards and was surprised to see it recover pictures that I had taken six months ago.

[HopeHoops]

6. I've heard of it, but none of the 30 or so I have ever went bad.

I've had them since they came out. The rule of thumb is to use them for transferring data, not as a backup system. Use an external hard drive or DVDs for backups.